


The Lamp of Nicholas

by ViridianPanther



Series: Love Goes Out The Window [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Author has never seen Aladdin (2019), BAMF Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Defenestration, Eye Trauma, First Kiss, First Time, Folklore, Getting Together, Hurt Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Inspired by 'The Fisherman and the Genie', Inspired by Aladdin (2019), Interrogation, It's not as grim as it sounds honest, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Whump, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani centric, M/M, Not a Crossover, Pre-Canon, Soft Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Starvation, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:00:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28446537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViridianPanther/pseuds/ViridianPanther
Summary: Yusuf’s blindfold is removed, he sees the flash of a steel blade, and—in an instant—knows exactly where this is going to go.They have found out what he is, and they want to know how.So it is a surprise when he finds himself being shoved into a chair, and a ruddy, round-faced Venetian priest grabbing him by the shoulders, and bellowing at him in ecclesiastical Latin:“Where is the lamp?”Twenty-five years ago, Yusuf told Nicolò an old folk tale about a fisherman and a djinnī trapped in an oil lamp. Then they parted ways at Alexandria, leaving Yusuf heartbroken.Now, as Tyre is captured by the Venetians after a long siege, Yusuf finds himself imprisoned in a tower by the sea for taking a stand. But who's been spreading rumours about an old oil lamp that belonged to Saint Nicholas?
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Love Goes Out The Window [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941874
Comments: 45
Kudos: 163





	The Lamp of Nicholas

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed content warnings in the end notes.
> 
> Please note, I've used the Arabic names for cities. Sur is Tyre, al-Iskandriyya is Alexandria, al-Quds is Jerusalem.

Here is a story Yusuf’s mother, Hanaa, told him as a young boy.

There was once a fisherman who lived in a great city. As a young man, he befriended an exile from a hostile nation across the sea. When the foreign king commuted his friend’s punishment, the fisherman convinced him to return to his people, promising that one day, they would see each other again.

Many years later, as arguments between the two cities’ monarchs erupted into war, the fisherman dredged up an old oil lamp containing a djinnī. The djinnī offered the fisherman three wishes in exchange for his freedom.

The fisherman said: “I wish to see my old friend from across the sea before I die; and I wish for a plague to strike down the enemy army.”

The trouble is, djinn can be mischievous, capricious, and cruel, much like any other people.

The fisherman’s friend returned to the city, as a commander in the enemy army. He choked and wasted away from the plague, and cursed the fisherman’s name as he expired.

The fisherman had one wish left. After long, sleepless nights, and careful deliberation, the fisherman rubbed the magic lamp one last time, and said: “djinnī: I wish I had never wished for my friend to return here.”

The djinnī could not un-break what was already broken, but was duty-bound to do his best. He granted the fisherman’s wish, and vanished into the sky, free at last. The fisherman, exhausted and ailing from the plague the invaders had brought into the city, died that night. Many years later, the exile came across the sea of his own accord, learned of the fisherman’s fate, and wept at his grave for seven days and seven nights.

* * *

Yusuf once tried telling this story to Nicolò, in an attempt to improve his budding Arabic, and their shared (unimpressive) command of sabir. This was hard. Yusuf’s sabir was mostly restricted to what was necessary to sell carpets and buy food and lodgings. The vocabulary was limited anyway, which made it difficult to explain the concepts: “lantern” became “light-cup” or “night-sun” (after this and enough hand gestures he got the point) and “djinnī” became “fire-person”.

(The fact Yusuf was recalling it from his own distant memory did not help. Some years later, back in Tunis, he would try to find a tome of old folk tales with this specific version of ‘the fisherman and the djinnī.’ He never would find one, and wondered how much of it his mother had made up, and how much had been passed down from her side of the family.)

Nicolò, when not raising his eyebrows at various words, did at least listen attentively, even though his eyes were drooping and his face was sallow after a long day’s march along the coast of Sinai. But when Yusuf had finished, there had been a long pause, after which Nicolò looked up, and asked: “is that it?”

Yusuf had groaned, and raised his eyebrows so far he felt like his skin was about to wilt and fall away from his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Nicolò had said to that—a phrase that was probably the most common thing Yusuf had heard from Nicolò since their odd alliance had been formed at Asqalan. And then he uttered possibly his next most well-worn phrase of sabir: “I do not understand.”

“You surprise me, Nicolò,” Yusuf had sighed, drily, and then offered him bread from his pack anyway.

Nicolò had, by now at least, known Yusuf—truly _known_ him, spoken to him, worked with him, argued with him—had known him enough to be able to detect that this was sarcasm. He didn’t say anything in response. He merely sat with his arms wrapped around his shins, and stared into the fire, chewing his bread.

One day, Yusuf thought, Nicolò would understand one of these moral fables. But for now, he would content himself with teaching him a few more words of Arabic, and with finding his crinkled face of confusion oddly endearing.

One day, Yusuf hoped, Nicolò might even return a smile.

* * *

On the first day the Christian pilgrims enter Sur, Yusuf manages to get himself thrown in prison.

He’s not sure he can remember exactly what they throw him in _for_ , as much as an invading force needs an excuse to throw people in prison, or indeed to murder them.

He guesses he is just relieved that the invaders seem less taken with the idea of slashing and stabbing at innocents while screeching something in Latin, than by the methodical process of plundering and intimidation. There are tears, and cries of protest, of course—all hoarse, weary, starved. No-one is willing to put up much of a fight any more.

The air in Sur, sweltering in high summer, is thick with the smell of death, salted with the sea and the sweat of the city’s men, women, and children.

Yusuf has spent every day of the last two months feeling as if he is constantly on the verge of throwing up—partly from the hunger, partly from the stench of decaying bodies, those unfortunate enough to succumb to malnutrition and not blessed by the gift (or curse) of instant regeneration. And with most every one of those days, Yusuf has thought about how much of a mistake it was to come here, which has made him feel even more ill.

(Because Yusuf feels as if he has been as good as useless in actually helping people and repelling the invasion. And the true reason he came—the hope that _he_ would be here—has failed to materialise.)

And so it would be just his luck that, at the moment when he decides he _is_ going to try and help, he manages to immediately attract the attention of some officious-looking Venetian soldiers, and gets thrown in prison.

The conversation goes something like this: Yusuf sees an argument across the street between an elderly potter by the name of Mustafa, skin leathery and stretched over his skull, and two ruddy-faced Venetians who have simply walked into his premises. One, brown-haired with a sharp chin, is inspecting his wares with ruthless efficiency and disregard for his livelihood. The other, with dangerous eyebrows and a massive forehead, is walking around in circles, restless, cursing angrily to himself in his peculiar Venetian tongue. It’s as if his sword hand is getting itchy.

Yusuf can tell things are heating up when Massive Forehead takes a massive amphora in the Roman style, and hurls it onto the street and into smithereens. There is a yelp of surprise from a few assembled women, and a pained cry from Mustafa himself. It seems to fuel the fire within the Venetian with the massive forehead, because he then smashes another, and another, and then swings his sword at a row of pots, sending them toppling and smashing them asunder in a dramatic cascade.

It’s when the old man gets down on his knees—a difficult thing at his age, and Yusuf has seen how much Mustafa struggles with the rakats at the masjid—that Yusuf al-Kaysani decides that there’s been quite enough of this, and tries to intervene.

He doesn’t have much. He has no saif, no armour, no helm, no plan, barely even an eating knife, and no strength to do things the old-fashioned way with sticks and rocks.

But Yusuf has a burning need to help at least _someone_ , to give this infernal journey to Sur a purpose—and so he rushes to the front of the pottery, stands amongst fragments and shards of painstakingly decorated and spun pots and jugs and lamps and amphorae and vases, and gives Massive Forehead and Pointy Chin a piece of his mind.

Unsurprisingly, they do not take it well, and Yusuf ends up with a sword pointed at his throat.

“Leave it, Yusuf!” calls Munirah, the woman from whom Yusuf buys his bread (when there _is_ any bread to buy.) Her nephew, Zulfiqar, a once-bulky man with a heavy-set nose who has grinned and winked more than once at Yusuf as their gazes crossed in the hammam, now watches nervously with his hand to his mouth.

Massive Forehead, a snarling man with rotting teeth, appears disgusted that Yusuf has spoken to him in perfect Venetian, and replies to him in livid staccato, enunciating every word as if Yusuf is a child: “don’t talk over your betters, pig.”

Yusuf knows if he sighs _too_ hard at that, the tip of the Venetian’s blade will make contact with his Adam’s apple—sharp enough to draw blood, but the wound will be small enough to close up in just a moment, and _that_ will raise more questions than answers.

So, he breathes, evenly, stoppering up the anger in his throat, until Massive Forehead, with his sword arm aching, draws back a little, and growls: “don’t your whore mothers teach you manners? Is that beyond the reckoning of you Turks?”

Yusuf rolls his eyes.

“I’m from Tunis,” he says, on a breath he has held for too long.

And then he thumps his own forehead into Massive Forehead’s.

The world reels with anger and vibrations, and Yusuf loses most of his faculty for motor control, speech, and spatial awareness, for a few seconds.

Those few seconds are enough for the assembled crowd to surge forward and close around Mustafa. Zulfi watches in horror as the Venetians take aim at Yusuf, frozen to the spot, while his aunt Munirah brings the old potter’s head down and herds him inside, away from the fast-growing crowd of Venetians who are taking it in turns to punch and kick Yusuf in the face, in the chest, in the testes, in the neck, in the legs—

He thinks he hears someone (it might be Zulfi, it might be Munirah) call his name as he blacks out—

* * *

(He thinks he dies at least once, and decides this was a mistake, because it hurts **so damn much—** )

* * *

When he awakens, he is being dragged by his feet, and has a gag in his mouth.

Yusuf tries to cry out in pain, to take a gasp of breath, but doing so just makes the ball of cloth move further towards the back of his throat, and all that comes out is (he thinks) a pathetic-sounding whine and the painful cough of a gag reflex.

And all Yusuf wants to do is cry, because he has failed, again.

He holds it back until he is actually deposited into a cell. To his surprise, he is the only one in it, and the dungeon is only half-full. There is even a slit of natural light in the corridor, and two torches set into sconces in the wall at least mean his eyes are not straining. He is at the end of a corridor, too, meaning he will at least have a private corner in his cell where he can shit into his bucket in peace.

And he has a private corner in which to cry, and feels guilty even for this dignity.

Of course, Yusuf knows within him that _none_ of this is his fault. It is not his fault that the ‘Christians’ are back in the Holy Land, screeching the name of Isa as they wreck and pillage and steal. But it does not change the fact that Yusuf, in this moment, feels as if he has failed his brothers and sisters in God, and his mother, and every single citizen of Sur. Because while there has not been a massacre here (yet), people have died, and Yusuf is still, unfairly, alive.

And, of course, he has failed Nicolò.

Because Nicolò is not here.

* * *

Yusuf managed to hide what he had become from his family for seven years.

He was well aware it could not last forever. He began to suspect, after three years back in Tunis helping his ageing mother Hanaa and his put-upon sister Rema to run the textiles business, that he had ceased to age after being struck down for the first time at al-Quds. The small talk from the family’s clientele had moved from “what’s a good-looking young man like you doing without a wife?” or “what’s someone with your surname doing this far west?” to “you haven’t aged a day, Yusuf!” and “how do you retain your youthful vigour? You must tell us your secret!”

There were ideas that formed in his head. These stretched from how the mechanism of his newfound immortality might work (maybe he now simply aged extremely slowly? Maybe he would still die at age sixty, or seventy, or eighty, but retain the body of a thirty-three year old?) to how he would stop his family uncovering his secret (maybe he would fake his own death, or steal away in the night, or paint his hair and beard white and walk with a cane and ‘act his age.’)

In the end, none of it mattered, because on one evening, they found out.

It was an unseasonably windy and rainy day in winter, and Hanaa was trying to get rid of a particularly chatty customer from Susa called Hilal. He had, unsurprisingly, remarked on Yusuf’s ever-youthful appearance, and pointedly mentioned that his daughter (“eighteen, a smile like the moon, _very_ beautiful”) was seeking a husband. Hanaa had told him that they would talk about it some other time, god willing (using that typically Hanaa bint Noor al-Kaysani sense of ‘in sha Allah’ as a substitute for ‘we will not’) but right now Hilal should really get back to his lodgings, _“because the wind and the rain are picking up and it would be a shame if those carpets you’ve bought were to flutter off into the sea before they get anywhere near Susa.”_

All this meant that Rema and Yusuf were left to dismantle the displays and bring them inside, normally a job shared between the three of them (and Rema’s husband, when he was here, which he was not today.)

It was something they were well-practiced at, but the weather was not helping. Yusuf lost his balance at least once when a gust of wind caught the carpets he was carrying like a sail. He came perilously close to tripping over a rolled-up rug on entering, decided there wasn’t enough light in the room, and took a few minutes to light a lamp before heading back outside, rolling up the canopy, and hauling it over his shoulder.

A sudden gust of wind and a torrent of rain sent him sideways, and he stopped for a moment, bending his knees and bracing himself until the wind subsided. Yusuf saw Hilal rounding the corner and disappearing behind another partly-disassembled market stall, while his mother adjusted her headscarf and bustled inside.

“Thank you, mama,” Yusuf said.

“You would’ve thought he would’ve got the message by now,” Hanaa scoffed. “Come along, my love, quickly. We can’t afford a new canopy, get it inside before it gets ruined. We still need to get the supports down. And watch out for that puddle.”

Yusuf nodded, even as his insides grumbled, like a wheel that had turned one too many revolutions and had been thrown out of true. Ten years ago, he had been in charge of the export business, and he missed the travel and the people and the adventure in the caravans to al-Quds and Bayrūt and Cairo. He missed being in places that were _not_ Tunis. He missed being away from his mother and his sisters, and being free to do his own thing so long as the carpets got sold.

That said, at least Yusuf’s mother had protected him, in her own way. Although he was dreading the day when he would have to explain his apparent immortality to her, she had never questioned why he never showed an interest in being paired off with a woman (less still one less than half his own age.) Yusuf guessed she must know, and was willing to leave it unsaid—and in that regard, he was grateful, even though his feet were wet and his hair was soaking and his shoulder ached from the weight of the rolled-up canopy and Hanaa was calling to him from inside and telling him to move it—

And so he turned, promptly forgot about the puddle, tripped on a loose sett, lost his footing, and slipped backwards.

He heard and felt a horrible twisting in his ankle, which was bad enough, and raised a grunt from his stomach.

And then, the canopy crashed into one of the wooden supports, bringing the heavy structure down onto his legs, and chest, and face.

He didn’t see much, and thought one of them might’ve got him in the eye when he felt something pierce and ram into his skull—

But he could certainly hear a yelp of surprise from Hanaa, and a scream from Rema, and his own flesh tearing and bone cracking.

* * *

The next thing he heard was an involuntary grunt of his own, and a sudden intake of breath from his right.

Yusuf (he _thought_ his name was Yusuf? It might’ve been Joseph for now, or maybe Yosef or Ioséf, depending on whose good side he was trying to get on) drew in a sharp, rattling gasp of air, and heard two voices yelping in something between surprise and relief—

“Yusuf?” he heard, and the tone of Rema’s voice changed mid-vowel, as he heard a crack from his own face, and reached up to find his nose re-formed, and dried blood on his cheek—

“My pure one, you are alive,” came Hanaa, and she was beside herself, sobbing, breathy, “god has willed this—”

“Mama, _look_ ,” Rema said, and…

Yusuf felt as if his insides had just deflated.

Because now Hanaa had gone silent, as had Rema, as he felt the squelching and shifting of displaced muscle and re-forming tendons, and let out a childish scream of pain as his right foot re-located itself onto his ankle.

Yusuf had forgotten quite how much this hurt.

There was a pause from this moment, as Rema and Hanaa held their breaths for longer than was truly comfortable, and Yusuf felt himself caught in a cycle of heavy, terrified gasps—because he had _not_ planned for this eventuality.

It was Rema who eventually broke the silence, whispering, simply, “Yusuf, brother— what is this?”

Yusuf opened his mouth, with a thousand potential answers on his lips.

“Yusuf?” Rema asked again. She cast a nervous glance at Hanaa, who had her hand over her mouth in shock, before turning back to Yusuf, and asking, “can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”

“I’m fine,” Yusuf said, and it was at the same time true and a bare-faced lie.

“What just happened, little brother?” Rema asked.

“I’m fine,” Yusuf repeated.

“Can I—” Rema asked, but did not wait for permission before moving closer on the floor, and running her fingers over Yusuf’s cheek, and murmuring: “Yusuf, there’s not so much as a scratch.”

“I must’ve got lucky,” Yusuf said, although he knew that this was futile, that they had seen _everything_ —

“I shall send for a physician,” Rema started, moving to stand.

Yusuf reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled, and grunted, still smarting from the pain: “no. No physician. I am fine.”

“Yusuf, you had a pole stuck in your eye!” Hanaa blurted. “Your face, it was cracked like an egg! You were _dead!_ ”

“I’m fine,” Yusuf repeated, moving to stand, “I’m fine, we need to get the scaffolding in before—“

And then he over-exerted himself, and slumped back onto the floor, and realised that he had stained the carpet in his mother’s living room.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Rema said. “Yusuf, talk to me.”

Rema rolled Yusuf gently onto his back, and placed a hand on his forehead.

The grounding touch calmed him down, as his mother came to his other side and took his hand in her own, clasping it tight, and kissing his knuckles— Yusuf felt safe, although he knew this was _not_ safe, and they would not understand if they found out the true nature of what had happened—

“I don’t know,” Yusuf said, finally. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” Rema asked, ever practical and to-the-point, something she got from her mother—

“What this is. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I don’t know what I am.”

Rema and Hanaa’s eyes met, just for a moment, before Hanaa looked into Yusuf’s eyes, and opened her mouth to ask—

“I don’t know. I did nothing. I didn’t meet a sorcerer in the east. I didn’t make a deal with a djinnī or an ifrit. But I just… I can’t—”

He did not need to say _die_ , because that much was obvious.

“How long has this been happening?” Rema asked next.

Yusuf was tired. Tired because his face and leg had just regrown themselves. Tired because his eyes were bleary and wet and the oil lamps in the sconces were making it hard to focus on anything. Tired of lying by omission.

So he told the truth.

“Since al-Quds,” he said, plainly. “Since the invaders came.”

Hanaa and Rema looked at each other, Hanaa’s mouth wide open with shock.

Yusuf could tell what was going to happen when Hanaa rocked forward on her knees, and moved her legs to stand.

“Don’t,” Yusuf groaned, wearily.

“Don’t what?” his mother asked.

“Just _don’t_ ,” he said, and whatever ‘it’ is—a visit to the masjid for guidance, a call for help from Yusuf’s uncles and aunties, a cup of milk—she gets the message, and settles back onto the floor. “You must not tell _anyone_ about this, umm Hanaa, my sister, you—all of you, you must never, _ever_ tell anyone what I am. Please.”

Hanaa let out a loose, ragged sigh, and placed the back of her hand on Yusuf’s forehead. Rema held her forefingers at Yusuf’s wrist, counting the beats of his heart.

* * *

“Tell us,” Rema said, later, as they sat at the table, Yusuf spooning uninterestedly at a mild fūl that Hanaa had thrown together in a hurry. “You can tell us, brother. We shall keep it between these walls. We shall keep you safe.”

“It’s not _my_ safety I’m worried about!” Yusuf glared, letting the spoon thud to the bottom of the bowl. “It’s yours! It’s _everything_ we have built here. If _anyone_ finds out about this, what will that mean? For all of us? For our business? For my nieces and nephews, Rema? For our cousins?”

“Stop,” Hanaa said—plain, and straightforward. “That’s enough. And I think you’ll find, since your father passed away, it’s _my_ business.”

“That’s not important,” Yusuf sighed—

“It is, my love,” Hanaa interrupted, firmly. “Because it’s a risk I’m willing to take. And that’s _my_ choice. Not yours.”

Yusuf took a few breaths to steady himself. Rema was looking at him expectantly from across the table, and Hanaa’s eyes were glimmering in the lamp-light.

“We knew something had changed at al-Quds,” Rema admitted. “You came back and you were changed, as men are by wars.”

“There is nothing in this world I want more, Yusuf,” Hanaa said, “than for you to be happy. Do you think we care that little for you that any of this would make a difference?”

Yusuf hid his head in his hands, and wept for what felt like a very long time, seven years’ worth of stoppered tears falling into the stew and the table and Hanaa’s and Rema’s tunics.

And then, he told them everything.

* * *

Something horrible dawns to Yusuf as he awakens from a fitful, painful slumber on the floor of his cell, tries to stretch, and almost tears his own sinews apart as he finds himself restrained by shackles.

The Christian guards who brought him into the tower took away all his worldly possessions, stripped him bare, and clothed him in a scratchy white tunic.

This tunic is still unstained by blood.

And assuming they spoke to Pointy Chin and Massive Forehead, and examined the bloodied state of his street clothing, they would have seen that he was no longer injured, and that all the stab and slash wounds had disappeared.

Which means, Yusuf realises— the Christians have captured him, and must know who he is.

They must know _what_ he is, and what he is capable of.

Yusuf feels his skin pinch with cold, goosebumps rising on the back of his neck. Because there is literally _nothing_ he can do now.

He could try breaking his wrists to escape the shackles, he thinks. It might work. But then how will he get out of the cell? There is a heavy door which is barred from the outside, and the viewing hatch is too small to get a hand and arm through.

There is no way out. Not until he hears footsteps, and the tortured scream of metal on metal, and is blindfolded and manhandled to his feet by gauntleted hands.

He doesn’t see the faces of the men dragging him through the corridors, and up the stairs. They mutter incantations in Latin much too fast for him to be able to understand.

Yusuf’s blindfold is removed, he sees the flash of a steel blade, and—in an instant—knows exactly where this is going to go.

They have found out what he is, and they want to know how.

So it is a surprise when he finds himself being shoved into a chair, and a ruddy, round-faced Venetian priest grabbing him by the shoulders, and bellowing at him in ecclesiastical Latin:

“Where is the lamp?”

* * *

“This Genoese man, Nicolò,” Hanaa once asked, at dinner, quite suddenly, “what was he like?”

Yusuf met her eyes across the table, much too large and too empty for the two people who now lived in this house. This was the first time his mother had mentioned… _this_ in about five years.

(He hadn’t been getting much sleep recently. The dreams of the two women were there as ever. He was also waking up more and more often in a cold sweat wondering how the family was going to keep the carpet business afloat, with the Christians seizing control of more of the land trade routes, with more cities falling to Frankish invasions, and with Yusuf’s ever-youthful appearance attracting enough suspicion from potential clients to ward them off. He did not dream of Nicolò, and it was maddening, because that was what Yusuf really needed—a reminder of simpler, younger times, when the world, for its faults, seemed less relentless.)

“What brought this on, mama?” Yusuf asked.

Hanaa stared at him for a long time, her wrinkled fingers tight around the spoon. After what felt like forever, she said: “when you told us how you got out of al-Quds, you told us his name and that he protected you on the way to Alexandria. And that he was like you.”

Yusuf nodded.

“So,” Hanaa probed, “what kind of a man is he?”

Yusuf stared at his couscous, and wished he was somewhere else.

“Come on, son. I’m not getting any younger. You can tell me,” Hanaa said—and the grain in her voice made something twist inside Yusuf’s heart, because this was his mother, getting old, _dying_ , her sagacity and her patience and her obstinacy fading into the past, and here was Yusuf, forever thirty-three years of age, unblemished, unwrinkled, and doing _nothing_ —barely keeping his late father’s business afloat.

And this was how he would be… for how long? Yusuf could see no future ahead of him. No life beyond continued existence.

“Are you even listening to me, Yusuf?”

* * *

“A lamp?”

The priest blinks, surprised to hear the Latin word repeated perfectly. Much like Massive Forehead, his mouth then crinkles into a snarl, and he spits: “the lamp! You know where it is! Tell us!”

“A lamp?” Yusuf repeats. And then he continues, although ecclesiastical Latin doesn’t allow a great deal of expressiveness and sarcasm, to add: “well, there’s this potter I know by the name of Mustafa, if you want a lamp, he makes lamps, he might even give you a discount if you tell him Yusuf from across the street sent you. Might take a while, though, your boys did a number on his stock and it takes forever for him to fire up his kiln—”

“That is not what I mean, pagan. The holy Lamp of Saint Nicholas. You know where it is, because you stole it. Tell us where it is, or the Lord shall not be merciful.”

Yusuf furrows his brow. The priest nods to one of the two guards in the room, who then pulls him back in the chair and punches him in the face. As Yusuf runs his tongue around his mouth, and spits out blood and a broken tooth as he feels a stab of pain from where his incisor is, right now, re-growing, he mumbles, switching to sabir: “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“You are a sorcerer, are you not?” the priest asks, suddenly business-like. “You stole a lamp that once belonged to Saint Nicholas of Bari from the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and have used it for witchcraft and dark magic.”

“I am no magician,” Yusuf replies, and then winces as his new tooth sinks into place—

“You have used the power embedded in that holy relic to bewitch good men and lead them away from Jesus. And _you_ have stolen its power to grant yourself eternal life.”

“I have _no_ idea what you are talking about, sir,” Yusuf replies. “I am no sorcerer. My name is Yusuf al-Kaysani. I am from Tunis. I have never performed any kind of sorcery—”

“And how do you explain the devilry I have just witnessed?” interrupts the priest.

Yusuf does not open his mouth, because he has no explanation.

That earns him another punch to the face, and another agonising few minutes as his jaw re-aligns itself, and his teeth sprout again from his bloodied gums, as the priest makes conversations in Venetian with the guard who punched him.

_“You’re not going to get anything out of this creature at this rate.”_

_“I am certain it’s him, though. He matches the description of the thief. Where did he say he was from, again? Tripoli?”_

_“Which Tripoli? There are two.”_

(Yusuf bites back the urge to say that there are, in fact, at least three cities called Tripoli, and he is from none of them.)

 _“I don’t know,”_ the priest replies, and then shushes the guard: _“be silent. If he understands Latin maybe he also speaks Venetian. Maybe he can understand us—”_

 _“I can fix that,”_ says the other guard—and something about the voice strikes Yusuf as familiar.

And before he can process exactly what is happening, there is a whipping of a blade through the air, a grunt, and gasps of shock and a strangled yelp, and Yusuf feels blood dripping across his back and into his hair—

Yusuf can hear his heart thrumming in his throat, and the breath of someone else.

And then he hears the sound of a European-style blade being sheathed, and a voice Yusuf recognises muttering to herself, “moron.”

Yusuf rolls onto his back, and scrambles away on his arms as best he can, in the shackles, as the guard removes her helmet and kneels, and an ancient pair of eyes peers at him.

“Hello, Yusuf,” says the woman from his dreams. “My name is Andromache. I’m like you. I’m here to get you out.”

* * *

Yusuf had almost become too comfortable with his present state of life when Nicolò announced, without warning, that he had negotiated passage on a ship to Messina, and that he would be leaving tomorrow.

“I thought you didn’t like being on the water,” Yusuf said, trying to sound as dry as he possibly could, but unable to hide the fact this had knocked him in a way he hadn’t expected.

“I don’t,” Nicolò replied.

“But you’d prefer that to walking or riding back through the Holy Land and around to Genoa?”

Nicolò didn’t reply to that, but left the answer implicit, because, Yusuf knew—he _should’ve_ known, all along—Nicolò wanted, more than anything, to go home.

And then Yusuf said, almost without realising how desperately he was saying it: “you could come with me.”

Nicolò’s eyes quirked upwards, and Yusuf found his breath hitching at the sight.

“You could,” Yusuf repeated. “The route to Tunis will be calm, it follows the coast along. And then it is not more than four days to Rome. There may even be a few traders heading straight for Genoa, if the political situation has improved, although the going may be rough.”

He knew it would involve more time on the water than the seven to ten days of Nicolò’s proposed route. He did believe that it might well have been calmer.

He knew it was helpless to argue, because if he had learned nothing else about Nicolò in the one hundred and twenty-nine days since they left Asqalan, it is that this man was stubborn and responded to argument in one of two modes: confused diffidence, or impetuous silence.

Yusuf also knew, deep down, that he would miss Nicolò when they did part ways. For all the irritations, the constant questions, the headaches from the fact neither of them _quite_ spoke a language the other had mastered and every conversation was largely rephrasing into simplified terminology they could both understand, for all the times Nicolò had turned up his nose at whatever food they could lay their hands on, and then eaten it anyway, for all the times they had made a circuitous and dangerous diversion because Nicolò was nervous about the idea of even fording a river, let alone swimming across it— in spite of all of this, he had grown fond of this man.

Indeed, Yusuf had realised that Nicolò was capable of being sweet, and kind.

“I have already sold my sword for passage,” Nicolò said, and Yusuf realised his mind had spun well ahead of the here and now—and there was no arguing with Nicolò. “I shall be leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

Yusuf drew in breath, and found the hired bedroom they shared suddenly very cold.

“Very well,” he said, finally, hoping that his voice was not shaking as much as his mind was, and added: “I shall miss you, Nicolò.”

* * *

On the night before he sailed for Sicily, Yusuf awoke to find Nicolò masturbating in the other bed.

He wasn’t that sure of the time, but knew it must be late, and that he had fallen asleep when he hadn’t really intended to. Their host in al-Iskandariyya, an elderly spinster named Bushra, on hearing the news of Nicolò’s imminent departure, had treated them to the biggest meal she could throw together in a hurry, served from an enormous pot, and they had all eaten until their stomachs ached and spoken about nothing and everything in a broken mix of sabir, Genoese, and Arabic until, finally, Yusuf had decided he needed to sleep, gone upstairs, and slopped onto the bunk, fully dressed.

(Come to think of it—the last thread of conversation he remembered was Bushra asking whether Nicolò had a wife he was heading back to in Genoa. When he’d said ‘no,’ she had probed further, and asked if there was anyone else waiting for him, whoever she, _or he_ , may be. There was a slight smile on her face. Nicolò had said nothing, and his skin had turned even redder than it already was from the sunburn.)

Yusuf had decided it was time to make his excuses. He had been exhausted, and had a full belly that ached and made him feel considerably rounder and slower than he had before the meal, and it all felt wrong— _everything_ felt wrong—and he had not fancied fielding the same question from Bushra and meeting her knowing smile.

And so he had laid down on his bunk, facing down, and barely remembered the straw mattress sinking underneath him.

And so, when Yusuf quirked his eye open, realised it was still dark and he felt scuzzy and he really needed to make wudu (no excuse _not_ to, not any more) and undress and sleep like an adult and not a sloven—he turned his head a little, and saw a shadow in the other bed, wide awake, and staring at his own crotch.

The nudity wasn’t what made Yusuf’s breath hitch in his throat and his face flush warm. They’d been sleeping within each other’s sight for the best part of half a year, by now. Yusuf knew well what Nicolò looked like naked—although he admitted to himself that now that both of them had been eating properly and grown a little fatter, he looked a lot better than the skinny wretch he’d made a truce with.

But watching Nicolò wrapped up in himself (quite literally) was something else. He was focused, he was shameless, he was breathing through a mouth that hung slightly open, and the sweat on his forehead was glistening in the moonlight.

He was beautiful.

And then he looked to his right, his eyes made contact with Yusuf, and he jolted—scrabbling away to the far edge of his bunk, and muttered something in Genoese. He didn’t need to understand the exact vocabulary to know it was an expletive and an apology.

Yusuf just closed his eyes, and looked down into the mattress, because that was not meant for him to see.

“It’s all right,” Yusuf grumbled. “I won’t look.”

Nicolò swallowed, and cleared his throat, as Yusuf raised himself from the bed, shrugged off his tunic and stepped out of his leggings with lazy, clumsy fingers, and tossed them at the foot of the mattress before crawling between the sheets.

“Good night, Nicolò,” Yusuf said, rubbing his face with his hands, and closed his eyes.

The blanket was heavy and rough-hewn, and scratched at his chest and his thighs and his groin, and it retained heat rather too well for comfort. Yusuf hung his leg out from the side of the bed, in the hope of regulating his temperature.

The sight of Nicolò pulling himself off had had a physical effect on Yusuf, too.

Nicolò was looking across the room too, and had quite obviously noticed the ridge in the blanket at Yusuf’s waistline.

Yusuf wasn’t quite sure if it was wind he could hear, or his own blood rushing through his ears, through his legs, through his arms, through his face, and he felt hot and cold and—

“Are you alright?” Nicolò asked, in the little Arabic he knew. Unassuming, diffident and yet with an undertow of confidence.

Yusuf looked down at himself, and at Nicolò, who now rose from the bed—moonlight shining across his face and chest and casting shadows over his thighs, and Yusuf swallowed.

Nicolò did not ask with words, so much as he waited on the other side of the room for consent. Yusuf did not consent with words, but, with shaking fingers, drew the blanket back a little, and shifted inwards on the bed.

Yusuf had, in the deep recesses of his mind, imagined what he would say at this point _far_ too many times. And yet, as the straw mattress warped under Nicolò’s weight, and Yusuf felt skin pressed to his side, bicep to bicep, hipbone to hipbone, thigh to thigh, and the tickle of Nicolò’s breath against his beard and his cheeks, nothing seemed to fit.

 _“I have wanted to do this for so many nights,”_ he didn’t say, as Nicolò gently moved a hand to Yusuf’s ribcage, to his stomach, and ran it around, raising a shiver from his belly.

 _“You are a better man than I thought and I don’t want you to leave without me,”_ he didn’t say, as those long fingers trailed down to his thighs and the gap between them, fingernails dragging on Yusuf’s skin and rustling through his body hair.

 _“Fuck me, hard,”_ he didn’t say, as Nicolò looked down, and then looked him in the eye, with an expression that almost seemed stunned, that singular focus diverted onto Yusuf—and Yusuf was enraptured, enchanted, and could not make a sound.

They grasped each other, and once their holds were sure, began to slowly, nervously build up an unsteady rhythm, and Nicolò gritted his teeth and sucked his breath in. It had been a while since Yusuf had taken a lover with a foreskin, but he remembered a few motions that usually worked, and it drew another serrated gasp into Nicolò’s breast.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked, as Nicolò looked at him again.

For a moment, he was worried that that had scared him away. Nicolò drew his hand away from Yusuf, moved back a little, and broke eye contact.

But then he bent down, and brought his mouth to Yusuf’s shoulder, and began moving downwards, in frantic, hungry kisses and licks and bites.

All Yusuf could do was twitch and tremor and let a surprised gasp and whimper rise through him.

* * *

Yusuf watched as Nicolò gathered the sheets around himself, and curled up in the opposite bunk, facing the window.

He had been a gentleman about it. Nicolò had dipped his spare pair of leggings in the pail of water to make a washcloth, to clear themselves of the mess they’d made. He had dried him off afterwards, brought the covers back over Yusuf, and swept his hair out of his eyes.

Yusuf had been lost for words.

He had resigned himself to looking but not touching for so long, had known that it was an impulse within him that he could not, _must not_ , act upon.

And yet Nicolò had given it willingly, and it had been one of the most thrilling encounters of his life.

And yet.

As they had laid beside each other, clumsily angled so they could best work each other to completion, Nicolò had pressed his lips to Yusuf’s shoulder, run his tongue around his neck, nibbled on his nipples, and Yusuf had kissed the crown of his head and whispered a Genoese word that Nicolò had taught him.

_“Beautiful.”_

And then, every time Yusuf had tried to lean over, to kiss Nicolò on the cheek, on the forehead, to actually _kiss_ him on the mouth and taste him and tell him the truth, _you are beautiful, you are a better man than I realised, seeing you leave will break my heart—_

Nicolò had darted his face away, and all Yusuf’s kisses had landed on his shoulder or neck or collarbone.

And now, lying across the room from him, watching him sleep, knowing that this was what Nicolò thought about what they had built together—that it was a casual thing, a union of convenience, that their encounter had been a mutual release or an act of bonding instead of the thing beyond that which Yusuf had hoped for so desperately—

Somehow, it was more devastating than the idea that he would never see Nicolò again.

And so Yusuf cried out his tears, silently, into his blanket, so he would have a clear face for tomorrow to wave Nicolò off at the docks.

* * *

“If you’re going to talk,” says Andromache, wiping her sword down on the priest’s cassock, “then don’t give him your real name.”

Yusuf doesn’t have time to dispute that. He’s at once amazed that she’s actually here, and very much sickened by the pool of blood he is now kneeling in, and the twisted expression of shock on the priest’s face.

“Sorry,” he says, stupidly, not even taking the time to realise until after he’s said it that she has said it, and he has replied, in Tamazight, the language his mother used with him as a young boy.

“You’re new,” says Andromache, “I’ll forgive you.”

She sets about removing the guard’s surcoat and helmet, revealing a heavy-set man with a flourish of brown hair and teeth that seem rather too large for his face.

(A tiny part of Yusuf takes in every face he sees, assessing it in a flash, and if it’s a man’s face, if he’s white-skinned and has _that particular_ shape of nose, something within him stalls and thinks it might be—)

“There’s another one,” Yusuf blurts, breathless. “His name’s Nicolò. Have you seen him?”

“No time for questions,” Andromache says.

“He’s like us. He can’t die. He’s from Genoa, he’s probably still there. Do you know where he is?”

“There’ll be time for that later,” Andromache says, manhandling the guard’s mail shirt over his arms. “Put this on. Quickly.”

Yusuf looks at the removed surcoat, and helmet, and mail shirt, and begins to have an idea of what Andromache’s doing, but—

“Have you seen him, though? In your dreams? Have you seen Nicolò? He’s got blue eyes, big nose, big eyebrows—”

“Later,” Andromache insists. “Quickly. _Now._ ”

Yusuf picks up the chain mail shirt, finds it much heavier than he was anticipating, and winces with pain—his back is sore, he cannot find the opening, and he can hear the thudding of boots on flagstones—

“Change of plan,” Andromache says, her eyes tracking to the door. “Play dead.”

_“What?”_

“Pretend I slit your throat or stabbed you. Add some blood if it’ll help,” she says, pointing to the floor. “Just don’t say _anything_.”

“Just tell me,” Yusuf pleads, as the footsteps grow louder, and so does the pummelling of his own heart against his ribcage. “Nicolò. You must’ve seen him? Where is he? We need to find him, if they know about me, they’ll know about him, he won’t be safe—”

“I’m sorry, Yusuf,” says Andromache, re-locking the shackles around his wrists. “He’s not here.”

“Then you _have_ seen him?”

“They’re almost here,” Andromache says, turning to face the door.

“Where is he? Is he all right? Is he safe—” because Yusuf has a thousand questions, and although he may not be here, if Andromache and the other woman have seen him, then—

“He’s dead.”

Andromache’s words slice through his questions like grass.

“Dead?” Yusuf repeats, mouth wide open with shock—

“Dead,” she replies. And then whispers, gently, “I’m sorry,” as she grabs him by the feet, and drags him out of the room and past the waiting guards.

Yusuf does not have to play dead. It is as if his life has been snuffed out.

* * *

“I told him the story about the fisherman and the djinnī once,” Yusuf said, as they rounded the corner onto the narrow street where the family’s old carpet stall used to stand.

Keeping pace with Hanaa, now using a cane and having to stop every few streets to catch her breath, made it much easier for Yusuf to act his fifty-seven years of age. He had grown out his beard and his hair and was wearing hats and long coats, and he took care to walk slowly in public, but the eyes following him around and the whispers in his presence were becoming more common.

“The fisherman and the djinnī?” Hanaa asked now, before coughing, and bracing her old skeleton on her walking stick. “The one where the fisherman tricks the djinnī into going back into the bottle?”

“No,” Yusuf replied. “The one with the exile.”

“Which one?” Hanaa crooked her eyebrow—a facial expression Yusuf had inherited from her. “There are a few variations.”

Yusuf closed his eyes, imagined the campfire, and Nicolò’s scrawny face and heavy-lidded eyes and peculiar nose and the smell of his bloodied tunic and sweaty farts and the rough calluses of his palms, and remembers the one he told him: “the one where the fisherman wishes he hadn’t wished the first wish.”

“Really?” Hanaa replied. “I don’t remember that one. Are you sure that wasn’t one of Rema’s? Or your auntie Maryam? The only one I told you where there were three wishes was the one where the fisherman wishes for his daughter to find a true love.”

Yusuf remembered a few details of this variation of the story. The djinnī had answered the fisherman’s wish by making an enemy soldier fall in love with his daughter and attempt to defect—only for him to be slain a few nights later.

The fisherman held on to his one remaining wish for many miserable nights, and finally, he asked the djinnī to take every day he had left on Earth, and grant it instead to his daughter’s lover. The fisherman died that night, surrounded by his daughter, and his new son-in-law.

“There are so many of these stories, though,” Hanaa mused. “I am sure you must have heard more than one.”

They turned the next corner, and Yusuf scoffed as they happened upon a stall with an elaborate display of lamps and torches, every shape and size, metal and clay and stone, some plain and shiny, some with delicate geometric patterns.

“No djinn here,” he mumbled.

His mother, inspecting the market-keeper’s wares, looked up solely to glare at Yusuf.

“What would you do?” she asked, plainly.

Yusuf blinked, confused, and replied: “mama, I do not understand.”

“Say you found a jar, or a lantern, or _whatever_ and a djinnī was inside it. Or the angel Jibrail, peace be upon him, comes to you, or… I don’t know, you catch a magic fish. If you could do _anything_ , what would it be?”

“What kind of a question is that, mother?” Yusuf asked.

“My child, _must_ you insist on being so inscrutable?” Hanaa sighed, and looked wistfully at a wonderful lamp she knew she probably could not afford, a bronze piece with a handle and a long nozzle for the wick and a geometric pattern around the reservoir’s lid. “You are fifty-seven years old, Yusuf, and it’s like I have a teenager in my house again. You barely speak to me about life.”

“I barely have a life,” replied Yusuf, glum, wondering if he could manage to work odd jobs and scrape together enough to buy his mother the lamp, because it was beautiful, and because Hanaa deserved to live out her years in light and with beautiful things in her house. “It ended at al-Quds.”

“Death does not seem to be coming for you any time soon.” Hanaa turned to her son, leaned her arms and her shoulders onto her cane, and regarded him with skittering, glassy eyes.

“Not here, mother,” Yusuf whispered, spotting the stall-keeper haggling, animated, with another potential customer. “Not where people will hear.”

“I don’t care what people hear,” Hanaa replied. “What is there for me to be ashamed of? That God has seen fit to watch over my son and bless him?”

“It’s not like that, umm Hanaa,” Yusuf said.

“Come on, my love. I’m old. I’m dying.” And when Yusuf opened his mouth to protest, or tell her not to speak about it like that, Hanaa interrupted: “enough of that. What will be will be. But I should like to see my son happy and with purpose again before I leave this world.”

Yusuf felt as if he could die of love for her. (As if.)

* * *

“It is this Nicolò, isn’t it?” she asked, that evening, as she sat at the table and spooned a broth Yusuf had prepared into her mouth. “It has always been him.”

Yusuf did not reply, but kept silent, and did not deny it. Instead, he swirled kuskus around in his bowl, taking great interest in how the tiny semolina balls followed each other, rotated with the turn of the spoon, how they were swept up in his own motion—how Yusuf was swept up in motions greater than he could comprehend—

“You could go across to Genoa,” Hanaa suggested, unprompted. “He may still be there.”

“I can’t leave you here, mother,” Yusuf said. “I shall not.”

“You shall have no choice, soon enough,” Hanaa replied, matter-of-factly, and coughed, and Yusuf winced because he hated being reminded of the fact that his mother was now, somehow, a very old woman.

Yusuf grumbled, and said: “well, he won’t still be there, if has any sense. The Christians are a superstitious people. They would’ve noticed by now.”

“Well,” supposed Hanaa. “He must’ve gone somewhere.”

* * *

“I know you’ve got questions,” Andromache says, in a low voice, switching back from sabir to Tamazight because she guesses Yusuf must be its only speaker in the cells and they cannot risk being overheard. “Make them quick.”

“He _can’t_ be dead,” Yusuf whispers, suddenly unable to control his breath, his heartbeat, the tears rising in his eyes, the way he brings his hands up to his face to bury it but cannot, because the shackles are stopping him from turning them—

“He is.” Andromache’s face is drawn like thunder.

“But he’s _immortal_.”

“Immortal for a time,” she replies. “One day, it just stops, and then we _can_ die. We don’t know when or why. It just happens.”

Yusuf draws in breath, and it goes down the wrong pipe and makes him feel like retching, and lets out an ugly whimper of pain, of regret, of anger, because he had his chance to find Nicolò, his chance to go to Genoa, to tell him on the docks at al-Iskandariyya exactly how he felt and to plead with him to stay—all of that, he had, and he lost, because he failed to use it.

“I know it’s hard,” Andromache says, in a low drawl, “but we _will_ get you out of here. We can’t just fight our way out of here—”

“When?” Yusuf asks. _“How?”_

Andromache can guess from the tears matting his beard, from the pained gasps, that this is not a question about their proposed manner of escape.

“The priesthood in Genoa found out what he was,” she replies. “They thought he’d been cursed. They tried every way they could think of to kill him. I guess eventually one of them stuck. We couldn’t get to him in time.”

“How?” Yusuf is breathless. “How did they kill him?”

Andromache tightens her jaw for a moment, as if deciding how much detail she is comfortable divulging. As if deciding how much is was willing to divulge to Yusuf right now—

“Just _tell_ me. Please. I need to know.”

Andromache’s mouth flattens into a sorrowful frown, and says: “we don’t know. We felt it, though. We guess he must’ve drowned.”

Yusuf does throw his head to the side that time and retch, although there’s nothing _for_ him to throw up, and he is wailing, mourning, and his throat has not hurt like this since last year when his mother died and he absolutely shattered, because although he knows that this is not his fault, he can do _nothing_ but feel guilty for failing those he loves.

Andromache, to her credit, waits for his cries to peter out into a coughing fit, before telling him she must leave.

“I am sorry. There will be more time to talk about this later,” she says. “I will be back. My friend Quỳnh and I _will_ get you out of here. Trust me.”

“Can’t we just fight our way out of here?” Yusuf asks, although he knows the answer.

“Even if we could, should we?” asks Andromache. “You’ve seen how itchy they are. We make too much noise, there’s no telling who could die.”

It is true. Yusuf knows this much. He has been on the sharp end of the ‘pilgrims’’ simmering anger, their urge after a long and hard siege to plunder and rape and murder—indeed, _he_ was murdered for stopping two soldiers from plundering the potter’s wares. Were a bigger engagement to start, that may break the fragile negotiated surrender and turn it into a massacre.

But it does not stop Yusuf from wanting to burn everything down, and salt the earth with his tears.

* * *

In the days after his mother’s funeral, Yusuf spent most evenings, the gaps between sunset and dusk when he was expected at (but rarely went to) the masjid, at the waterfront, looking north over the sea, to where he guessed Genoa must be.

The questions he wanted to ask churned in his mind, slammed into his ossified guilt like waves crashing against the docks, washed back and rose from his eyes as tears again, and again, and again.

_Did you survive the voyage without falling ill? How long did it take you to walk up the coast of Italy? Was there anyone waiting for you back in Genoa? Will you now accept me as a human and not a ‘saracen’ and an ‘infidel’? Are you eating well? Are you happy? Are you at peace? Do you remember me?_

The salt and the wind made his eyes sting.

When he returned to the house after nightfall, Rema was waiting in the main room, sitting cross-legged on the floor—just as she had, all those years ago, when she and their mother had discovered Yusuf’s secret for the first time. The decorative bronze lamp, purchased between them both as a present for Hanaa at the last Eid al-Fitr, shone brightly in the sconce—probably the only thing in this house any more of any value.

Rema wordlessly held Yusuf’s hands for a long time, although the sight of her face, now with its own wrinkles and laugh lines and greying hairs—

“I cannot stop this, my sister,” he whispered. “I do not know how long this shall last.”

Her hands tightened around Yusuf’s, and she nodded, and Yusuf was reminded, somehow, of the last time he had seen Nicolò—on the docks at al-Iskandariyya, when Nicolò had thanked Yusuf for everything, and clutched his hands, and wished him a long and blessed life.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Yusuf,” Rema whispered. “Nothing. None of this is your doing. Our mother had a good life. As have I. And you shall, too.”

Yusuf knew this, but it did not stop him feeling unworthy, like a son who had failed. The fact that he could only speak to his sister in their old house, under cover of darkness, where his nieces and nephews would not find nor overhear them, nor realise that their uncle had never aged; the fact he had not had a proper job since the textiles business had been bought out; the fact that Yusuf was now an old man in a young man’s body, and had done nothing to deserve this honour—

“You are only like this, little brother, because God has willed it.” Rema smiled, and stared with eyes so like his mother’s, so like his own, and yet so _un_ -like in many other ways— “Your future cannot lie here, Yusuf. This will always be your home, but your future lies with someone like you. Not with a silly old woman like me.”

Hearing Rema, merely two years older than him, describing herself as a ‘silly old woman’ shattered something within Yusuf, and before he knew it he was sobbing again, and Rema was holding him to her breast, and kissing the crown of his head, because both of them _knew_ there was only one way this could end.

* * *

The next night, Yusuf announced his intent to depart.

The rumours at the docks were that the Venetians had found their own way to Palestine, after a furious call for aid from the the (illegitimate) king of Jerusalem. There were stories of a naval battle at Yafa, a massacre of thousands, and of raids on Byzantine cities en route.

“It will be different to last time,” Yusuf told Rema. “I shall go to the Holy Land and do what I can.”

“And if they discover who you are?” Rema asked, although she knew this day had been coming for a long time.

“I am past caring,” he murmured. “It is as you said, and as mother said. The will of God.”

“You cannot do everything by yourself, little brother,” said Rema.

Yusuf nodded, and said, “I won’t be.”

Yesterday evening, after their last conversation, Yusuf had dreamed of the women again—the white-skinned woman with the sharp cheeks, and the keen-eyed woman from somewhere far to the east. He had not been able to discern either of their names from the fragments of sound, but he remembered feeling them die and heal, and remembered feeling them clutch and embrace and kiss. He remembered the first time Nicolò had broached the topic with him, and wondered aloud if these two women were destined to be Yusuf’s and Nicolò’s wives—until Yusuf pointed out that they were probably already fucking each other, and Nicolò’s cheeks had gone even redder than usual.

(He also dreamed of Nicolò’s eyes for the first time in a while, and must have imagined the sound of his voice, forming a syllable that had no meaning by itself, but still made his heart ache.)

“He might be there,” said Rema, as if reading Yusuf’s mind. And when he opened his mouth to ask ‘who,’ she interrupted: “you know who I’m talking about.”

Yusuf shut his eyes.

“So I shall have to explain him to you, as well? You sound like mum.”

“We _are_ her children,” Rema smiled. “You have her stubbornness.”

“So do you,” Yusuf said—and that was enough to draw a laugh from both of them.

It had been much, much too long since Yusuf had laughed. And it was brief, a single shining moment before Yusuf realised the enormity of what he was about to do, and his lip melted again and he felt hot tears on his cheeks, and cried: “I love you, sister.”

“And I love you too, Yusuf,” whispered Rema, on the verge of tears herself. “I shall always love you.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Yusuf’s attention distracted by the flickering of his mother’s oil lamp. Not for the first time, he felt like a fisherman, or a farmer, or a petty thief, who hadn’t been careful what he’d wished for and done more harm than good, and was left to fix the mess he had created.

 _Do you understand the story I told you,_ he imagined asking Nicolò, _about the fisherman and the djinnī? Do you realise it’s a fable, a proverb? That we must be careful what we wish for?_ He imagined Nicolò’s face scrunching up in confusion, and that tiny smile he made with his cheek.

“Mother would have liked him,” Yusuf mumbled.

* * *

Yusuf isn’t sure how long it is until the guards come back to lead him up to the top of the tower, but he is now, quite literally, starving, and he just wishes it was over.

“I can’t promise this will be quick,” Andromache whispers, in Tamazight, on a narrow single-file staircase where there is little risk of her being overheard. “But we shall try.”

“I don’t even know why I’m trusting you,” Yusuf mumbles, just a little too loudly, and that draws a hiss and a demand for silence from the guard behind him.

“I mean what I said about making something up,” Andromache whispers again, when she’s certain the other guard is out of earshot. “I told them that you were possessed and it was you who killed that guard and the priest.”

Yusuf takes a moment to comprehend that, and feels ashamed that he has no energy to raise a protest.

“Just pretend that you’re possessed,” says Andromache. “They might try to interrogate you, they might try to exorcise the demon from you. I’m sorry. If I could do something better, I would. Just play along. Pretend you don’t understand their language, if that helps.”

He doesn’t grunt his approval, or indeed any form of acknowledgment, for fear of giving the guard behind him an excuse to kick his face in. But his knees ache from the long walk up the stairs, his feet are filthy, and Yusuf feels like a husk, a wastrel, and he is barely remembering how to put one foot in front of the other.

When they finally reach the top floor of the tower, Andromache opens the door before him, and gives the tiniest jerk of her helmet towards Yusuf.

He begins to wonder if it was a mistake to trust Andromache.

The top floor of the tower is a single, cavernous room, with a tiled floor and an enormous window with a low ledge—low enough for the heavy wooden chair he sees beside it to be tilted over the edge, as an interrogation method.

Yusuf remembers the last time he went out of a window. It was by his own hand, back in Asqalan, when he had tried to escape from Nicolò just after the last time they’d killed each other. A simpler time, in ways. It still hurt like nothing else, and even small heights still make him feel a little ill, which he does _not_ need right now—

He feels his stomach deflate even further as he is tugged and dragged and manhandled to the chair, his eyes straining in the glare of the sunset. Yusuf smells salt, sees twinkling waves and the masts of ships, and has his suspicions confirmed—this tower stands in the sea.

He didn’t think to ask Andromache what her plan was to get him out, and he’s regretting this now, because he does _not_ like the idea of falling out of the window and drowning in the Mediterranean, or being dashed on rocks or ancient columns or getting trapped in an underwater cave, or washing back up on the shore and being captured again—

He sucks in his breath as the guards tighten the ropes around his middle, and across his chest, and around his wrists, and Yusuf feels like it might be tight enough to break his ribs, whose presence he is suddenly acutely aware of. He thinks he might look even more emaciated than Nicolò did when they’d first crossed swords, or clasped hands—

Nicolò’s touch, his tempestuous eyes, his bellicose eyebrows, the sound of his voice— the thought of it is too much, and by the time the two priests arrive, hooded and wearing enormous necklaces, he is sobbing again, and can not even wipe his own eyes, the tears forming rivulets down his cheeks and into his clothes and into the ropes.

The shorter priest, apparently the more senior of the two, crosses himself and mutters something that Yusuf assumes is a pater noster under his breath.

He doesn’t care. There is no use in Yusuf having shame or pride any more. He is a thousand miles from home. His mother is dead, his sister is old, and if he ever makes it back, he will be regarded permanently with suspicion and alarm. The only man he has ever met who is _anything_ like him is dead. One of the women he has dreamed about for so long broke the news to him.

But he’s had enough of this shit.

“Do you know Nicolò of Genoa?” Yusuf shouts across the room, in sabir, and the senior priest—a bishop, possibly—jumps in fear.

Yusuf supposes this is an advantage, but _nothing_ feels like an advantage in this situation.

(One of the helmeted guards by the door sags their head imperceptibly, as if sighing beneath, which is as good a signal as Yusuf is going to get that this particular guard is Andromache. Not that that’s going to make a difference.)

“Who am I speaking to?” the bishop demands, in a patrician baritone that sounds all-too stereotypically Venetian. “Show yourself, demon. Set this infidel free.”

“You speak to _me_ ,” Yusuf growls, deliberately omitting words and choosing the wrong tenses to sound like he has a lesser command of this tongue than he does. “Did you know Nicolò?”

“Get Saint Nicholas’s name out of your mouth, infidel.” The bishop is livid, either with Yusuf or with the demon he assumes inhabits his body. “You possess his holy lamp. You _shall_ return it to us!”

“Return to you for what?” Yusuf is tired and he is pissed and he is starving, but something atavistic within him is enjoying this, simultaneously playing clever and stupid and flaying the minds of two people whose worldview revolves around hating him. “You have a room that is too dark? Maybe cheaper to knock a new window in the wall with those siege engines than bring them all to Tyre. Big waste.”

“You _know_ what we are looking for,” the bishop simpers. “Be you demon, or man, we _will_ find the Lamp of Saint Nicholas, and we _will_ return it to its rightful home in San Nicolò al Lido in Venezia, and the Lord, your God, shall not be merciful—”

Yusuf could argue that this lamp they’re looking for is no more at home in Venice than it is in Myra, where Saint Nicholas was the bishop. He knows it will be a pointless argument, because ‘pilgrims’ do not argue. They harass, they intimidate, they plunder, and they kill. He is not going to negotiate with these people.

“You call yourself a man of God?” Yusuf demands. “Does the Lord your God not say, ‘you shall not steal?’ And all you do is come here and steal what is not—”

For that, Yusuf finds a mail-shirted guard’s sword pointed at his throat, again.

“What do you think, my lord?” the guard, frumpy with strawberry-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, asks the bishop. “Should I teach him a lesson? If he is possessed, maybe this will free him of the demon, too?” He asks it while smiling, and Yusuf feels a sickening twist in his gut—

“I knew Nicholas,” Yusuf blurts, on a whisper, knowing that although he will survive his throat being slit, it will hurt _so_ much, and he is carrying enough pain with him already—

The bishop’s eyebrows slide up his forehead in surprise. Yusuf breathes a sigh of relief as the blade-point draws back.

“You _knew_ Nicholas?” the bishop asks, incredulous.

“Goffredo,” says Strawberry Ponytail—

“That’s _The Reverend Lord_ Goffredo to you, sire—”

“Listen,” Ponytail presses, ignoring the Reverend Lord Goffredo’s protestations, “if he can’t die, maybe—maybe he _did_ know Saint Nicholas? And he stole his lamp and used it to keep himself alive?”

Yusuf is no longer sure he knows what’s happening, or what they think he is, or what they think he’s stolen, but he runs with it, because he is angry, and he does not care _what_ they think of him, and he has always been one to speak his mind and put his foot in it, and he is an old man and has no intention of stopping now.

“You think I would steal? From Nicholas? Steal a lamp to call on djinn and demons? I knew Nicholas. We met at the gates of Jerusalem as enemies.”

“Saint Nicholas of Bari was never at Jerusalem,” Goffredo interjects, as if that will stop Yusuf—

“Nicholas was at Jerusalem. He was an invader. He was part of an army that robbed and pillaged and murdered and slaughtered. And he _saw_ it. He _saw_ that it was wicked and cruel. And when I offered him peace, he took it. What would Nicholas say now? Hmm?”

“If you _knew_ Nicholas,” Goffredo cuts in, face turning purple with anger, “if you _knew_ him, you know where. You know where the lamp is! Tell us!”

“This isn’t about any lamp,” Yusuf retorts. “This is a man who did a thing braver than anything you or I shall ever do. What would he say to you now? Making us starve for a trade dispute because _God wills it_? Accusing an innocent man of theft? Destroying people’s wares and livelihoods?”

That lights Goffredo’s fuse, and he strides forward here, grasps Yusuf by the shoulders, and drags him far enough forward for his bonds to be digging into his skeleton and for him to be able to smell the fishy aftertaste of the bishop’s last meal as he snarls in Yusuf’s face.

“You _dare_ to use the name of Saint Nicholas with your filthy infidel mouth? Tell me. _Where is the lamp?_ ”

“I use the name of Nicholas because he was a good man. The _best_ man. He was a braver and kinder man than you will ever be.”

“The _lamp!_ ” Goffredo snarls, “where is it?”

“He was generous and sweet and I regret _every day_ that I did not tell him when we parted how much our friendship meant to me. _Every day_ I think about how I failed him as a friend, as something more,” and Yusuf doesn’t care that the tears are rising again, or that this is the truth, because he needs to get it out. “I offered Nicholas a hand in peace and he _took_ it, and he held it tight, and he convinced me that there was some good in your people after all they had done to me. And then he returned to you, and you killed him, again, and again. Your church, your bishops, you were not worthy of as kind a man as he—”

“You are talking rubbish,” Goffredo growls over Yusuf, “the _lamp_ —”

“—and I saw why the Almighty chose to bless us both with a reprieve from death. Because I have been the receiver of his kindness. And now I will never be able to thank him for that, I will never be able to tell him how much I loved him. Because I let him go back to the place that turned him into a monster, and now—”

Goffredo is apparently confounded enough by this verbal torrent from Yusuf that he turns away, and mutters to himself in ecclesiastical Latin. “Of course. An idiot. He can’t understand our tongue, why would he? Iago, try and get some sense out of him.”

Yusuf is surprised, but knows he should not be, that Goffredo thinks there is any language barrier at all.

“Iago?”

The junior priest raises his head, as if surprised by the sound of his own name.

“Yes, my Lord,” he replies, in a wavering, reedy voice that seems unnaturally breathy. His hood is still drawn over his face, so all Yusuf can see is a pointy, clean-shaven chin, the shadow of a nose, and a mole set into skin that seems too pale to be real.

“You speak Arab-ish, do you not? See what you can get out of him.”

The junior priest nods, and moves forward, almost hesitant. As if this young man is afraid of Yusuf, or the demon he must think is contained within him, like a djinnī in a lamp—

Then the priest hitches his hood back an inch or so, just enough for the light of the setting sun to catch on a familiar pair of eyes.

Yusuf is overcome with a sudden shiver, a tremor against the ropes binding him to the chair, a stab of ice in his heart, and an implosion of breath in his lungs, as if he has seen a ghūl, or a djinnī, or an ifrit, because—

Because, after almost a quarter of a century, Nicolò of Genoa, _his_ Nicholas, is standing right in front of him, and has been for all of this.

His jaw is hanging open a little, his lips are quivering, and he is regarding Yusuf with exhausted eyes that are blinking rapidly.

Before Yusuf can open his mouth and call his name, or gasp out something about how he thought he was dead, Nicolò pulls himself together, moves a step closer, and, to Yusuf’s shock, says in Arabic:

“Don’t say anything. Pretend we don’t know each other.”

* * *

The ‘pilgrims’ had been spreading stories for some time, and Yusuf had heard them, within and without the city walls of Sur, throughout the months of the siege.

This is the story that Yusuf heard: a long time ago, a sorcerer claiming to be Nicholas of Myra (or of Bari, if you believed the Catholics) stole an oil lamp that had belonged to the true Nicholas, and secreted it in a cave in the desert. There it was found by a young thief from a town in Outremer. The thief rubbed the lamp, and found that it contained the trapped and tortured soul of Saint Nicholas. The sorcerer had used the power of Saint Nicholas’s relic to grant himself eternal life, and to lead rightfully Christian lands astray.

“It’s all twaddle, of course,” Mustafa, the potter, had told Yusuf in the hammam a few months ago (back when food and oil hadn’t been _quite_ so scarce) after recounting the version of this story he had heard. “Just another pretext for them to invade.”

“They have never needed a pretext,” Yusuf had replied, knowing he had more first-hand experience with this than Mustafa knew.

“Can’t hurt them to add another one to their list, though,” Mustafa had laughed, and, after dousing his hair under the running water, continued: “It’s so non-specific! I heard it off this Frank, _a town in Outremer_ , I asked which one, he said ‘I heard it was Cairo.’”

Yusuf had rolled his eyes, as Zulfiqar, the baker’s nephew, had laughed and suggested: “get him to find Cairo on a map. That’ll silence him for a few minutes.”

“That, my friend,” Mustafa smirked, “would require them to be able to read. And of course, everything between Murrakus and China is desert. With caves. Because there are so many caves in the desert.”

“Tell me about it,” Yusuf replied.

“Magic lanterns.” Mustafa reached for a towel with quivering, bony fingers, and snorted with laughter. “Whatever next? Nicholas of Myra was actually a djinnī?”

“Maybe he’ll grant me three wishes!” Zulfi grinned, stretching his arms distractingly and letting his gaze linger on Yusuf a moment too long for it to be entirely innocent.

Yusuf sighed, closed his eyes, rested his head against the tiled wall, and wondered how much Zulfi would be put off (if at all) to discover that Yusuf was old enough to be his father.

* * *

The (poor) Frankish sense of geography had been a topic of conversation between himself and Nicolò, a long time ago, as they had warily plodded their way south and west around the coastline, away from the Holy Land. After a long day’s march, Yusuf had drawn a rough map of Ifriqya and al-Andalus in the dirt, and pointed to a rough location of Tunis. Nicolò’s eyes had widened as Yusuf pointed down the coast, at Susa and al-Mahdiyah—for reasons it took Yusuf a moment to realise.

“My father,” Nicolò had explained, after the realisation had dawned on Yusuf. “He is in the fleet that did the attack in Mahdia.”

Yusuf blinked, and decided to leave this particular part of Nicolò’s heritage unremarked.

Nicolò, however, had other ideas.

“Is it in the blood of my people? To steal? To murder?”

Yusuf felt something inside him twist at that, as if his heart was pulling itself asunder. Such an endearingly naïve view of the world, and yet—a look into those dark eyes, the grim furrow of his brows, and Yusuf knew that this _was_ how he had been raised to see the world, and he could not help but pity the man.

“I do not believe God makes people wicked, or cruel,” he said, sitting down wearily next to Nicolò.

“We are _still_ wicked and cruel.”

Yusuf let Nicolò think that statement over for a moment before saying: “Wickedness is a thing a man does, not a thing he is.”

“And am I capable of anything else?” Nicolò mumbled.

Yusuf turned his head to look at him, but Nicolò kept his stare trained on the rude map before him. His eyes were like thunder.

“Do you think I would have agreed to have you come with me, Nicolò,” Yusuf asked, “if I did not think you capable of kindness?”

“I am an _invader,_ Yusuf.” At this, Nicolò jerked his head around, and he shivered, his breath coming in convulsive, angry waves. “I am a simpleton. A murderer. I believed what they teach me about you people. That you are pagans, or thieves. That you practiced black magic.”

Yusuf nodded.

“But now you know better, do you not?”

Nicolò closed his eyes, and nodded, just a little.

And then he said: “It does not un-do what…” and here he paused, searching for the word. “I do not know the sabir. In Arabic, how do you say?” and he mimed his fist making contact with the dirt, and rupturing apart.

“Break.”

“It does not un-do what I have broken before,” Nicolò replied. And then, repeating the word again, conjugating it, curling it around his tongue: “ _Break. Broken. Breaking._ Thank you.”

Yusuf took Nicolò’s hand in his, and squeezed it by way of reassurance.

* * *

“I shall ask him for his name,” Nicolò says, to Padre Goffredo, in Venetian, in an accent that is… _not_ the voice Yusuf expected to come out of Nicolò’s face—much too high for his vocal range, to the point where some of the vowels come off as wheezy.

“Ascertain whether you are speaking to the Saracen or the demon within,” Goffredo says. “We need that lamp.”

Nicolò turns back to Yusuf, breathes in, and quirks his eyebrows, as if in a wordless ‘sorry,’ before saying, in a nasal, wavering attempt at Arabic pronunciation: “give me a name. Not your real name. Make something up.”

“Nico—”

“ _Don't_ say anything,” Nicolò cuts in. “As far as they know I’m Padre Iago di Venezia.”

“But you’re dead—”

“We don’t have the time. _Please,_ ” Nicolò pleads. “Help me. Give me something to work with.”

Yusuf’s eyes flit to the far end of the room, where the guard who he thinks must be Andromache stands, her visor down over her helmet. She is turning her face in small quirks towards Nicolò, towards another guard (Yusuf assumes this must be the other woman, whose name Andromache had told him was Quỳnh) and to Yusuf himself.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Yusuf whispers, staring at Nicolò, and he can’t help the tears in his eyes now. “It has been so long, I thought we would never see each other again—“

 _“Iago,”_ Goffredo calls from across the room. “I don’t have time for dilly-dallying. Ask the infidel about the lamp.”

“One moment, sir,” Nicolò replies, in that silly tremolo—and Yusuf is finding it hard not to laugh as he cries, because the accent is singularly ridiculous. “He is overcome that I speak his tongue.”

“Well, _speak it,_ ” replies Goffredo, “quickly, and then we can put him out of his misery.”

Yusuf’s blood runs cold, although knows he cannot react, cannot let on that he knows more of Goffredo’s tongue—he is tired, he knows this is going to hurt, and he does not know if he can trust Nicolò, and Andromache lied to him, and he is so damn _tired_ with all this shit—

“I’m here,” Nicolò says to him, in Arabic. “I’m here. I won’t let them hurt you.”

“I don’t know how— why— I—” Yusuf cannot form a sentence, is struggling to form so much as a word, because this is beyond anything he had imagined, anything he’s prepared for—

“Please, Yusuf. Trust me. Please. Just for now.”

Nicolò’s voice, his accent and timbre as warped in disguise as it is, is still a sound that seems to do… _something_ to calm Yusuf. He blinks, and his eyes meet Nicolò’s—

“You’re a _waste of space_ , boy,” sighs Goffredo, cassock billowing behind him as he loses patience, grabs a quarterstaff from one of the guards, pushes Nicolò to the side, and points the tip of the staff at Yusuf’s chest, and snarls: “Tell me, Saracen. _Where is the lamp?_ ”

“Tell him a name,” Nicolò says, quickly, in Arabic, shouting past Goffredo to Yusuf as he regains his balance. “A false name.”

And then Goffredo pushes the staff forward, and jabs it sharply into Yusuf’s ribs, and he sees Nicolò wincing and his mouth dropping open in horror—

“Name!” Yusuf yelps, condensing that stab of pain into a sabir word, and then breathing, and continuing: “name! You want my name, yes? My name. My name,” he repeats, allowing himself time to find an accent to settle on, and for Goffredo to withdraw his staff, and for Yusuf to invent a name for himself, the most generic name he can imagine— “yes, my name, I shall tell you, my lord, my name… it is Ala ad-Din…” and here he _really_ hopes he is exuding enough confidence to sell this as nervousness at being interrogated rather than stalling to invent names for his fictional ancestors, “my name is Ala ad-Din, son of… Mustafa… son of… Zulfiqar… son of… Ja’far—”

Goffredo puzzles over this for a moment, and then pushes the quarterstaff in harder, and brings his face close enough that Yusuf can see every one of the untrimmed moustache hairs around his jowls and the burst capillaries on his forehead and smell the wine on his breath as he snarls: “and be you a demon, or a man?”

“Perhaps it is best if I take over,” Nicolò interrupts, in that peculiarly simpering tremolo, “he might not understand what ‘demon’ means in his language, or might think when you say ‘lamp’ you mean ‘light’ or ‘torch,’” and before Yusuf can invent an answer he is practically pushing Goffredo back out of the way, and Yusuf is breathing a sigh of relief although the pain in his ribs continues to smart. “Are you alright?” Nicolò asks, in Arabic.

“Fine,” Yusuf says, and then realises that came out in sabir rather than in Arabic, and kicks himself, and repeats in Arabic, “fine. Better.”

Nicolò says, “he thinks I’m asking you about the lamp. We had better invent something convincing to tell him.”

“How are you speaking such good Arabic?” Yusuf asks, still astonished, wanting, more than anything, to break loose of his bonds and reach out and take Nicolò in his arms—

“I learned,” Nicolò replies, and then changes the topic, “we don’t have time. We need to give him a story he’ll believe.”

“Keep it to the lamp,” Goffredo calls out, pacing back and forth along the width of the room. “If he _is_ a man and not a servant of Satan.”

Yusuf asks Nicolò: “why is he looking for a lamp?”

“Because he wants a trophy to take back to Venice,” Nicolò replies.

 _“Well?”_ Goffredo snaps. “Iago? Are you addressing the demon, or the man?”

Nicolò casts a glance over his shoulder, locks eyes with Yusuf for a second, and whispers.

_“Trust me.”_

And with that, ‘Padre Iago’ turns around, orders Goffredo and the guards in Venetian to ‘stand back, lest he spit in your face or bite off your fingers while I attempt the process,’ and then spins back to face Yusuf and comes closer, his cassock making a dramatic billow as he does so.

He whispers again, in Arabic, “your feet. Are you strong enough?”

Yusuf casts a glance at Goffredo, now watching intently.

Nicolò follows his gaze, and kneels, bringing the volume of his robe around him, and says, this time at full voice with the peculiar accent but still in Arabic: “he can’t see now. Can you try?”

“What are you going to do?” Yusuf asks.

“Pretend to take the demon out,” Nicolò replies. “I will put my hand on you and say a prayer. That will buy us some time.”

“Then?”

“We get Goffredo to leave, then we walk out.” And then Nicolò hesitates for a second before adding: “together.”

Yusuf wants to laugh at the silly accent and the screeching voice and the cassock that seems much too big for Nicolò. He wants to be out of here right now. He wants to sob into Nicolò’s breast and demand to know where he’s been for the last twenty years.

Nicolò raises his right hand, and brings himself close to Yusuf. He mouths something, imperceptible, but Yusuf knows what it means. _Are you happy with this?_

“I trust you,” Yusuf whispers.

Nicolò’s palm lands on his forehead, and Yusuf breathes, and tries to move his legs.

The ropes tying him to the chair legs don’t budge. Yusuf tries harder. It _hurts_. He lets out a grunt of pain.

Nicolò is whispering in Latin, _“hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,”_ but—

But those eyes are fixed on Yusuf.

And between one _“amen”_ and the next _“pater noster”_ , Nicolò breathes out a smile, and Yusuf practically melts as he whispers in Arabic, “you can do this.”

Yusuf twists himself again. Just a little bit, back and forth, and he hears the sound of thread moving on thread beneath him, just under the crashing of the waves at the foot of the tower, and creaking wood. He lets out a grunt of effort, and then he twists a bit too far and _aaah—_ his Achilles tendon is now twinging, and so is the sole of his foot whether he twists it or un-clenches it, and Yusuf has had many cramps in his life and this isn’t even the worst but he can’t help but groan in pain and hiss breath between his teeth—

“Are you alright?” Nicolò whispers, under a breath. His face is drawn with alarm.

“Cramp,” Yusuf breathes.

At that, Nicolò brings himself closer, repositioning his hand on Yusuf’s forehead (and his touch is warm and soft and a comforting presence, a pail of water in the desert) and whispering, “easy. Breathe slow. Calm—”

“I’m _fine_ —” Yusuf grunts, and allows that to rise into a scream— “if I _shout_ , maybe _he’ll think!_ Aah! Fuck! Aah!” and he now draws it up to a screech, a bellow, an unholy gurgling rasping sound— “ _He’ll think_ I’m—aaaargh—that— _aaaaghaghaghaghagh_ —the demon is— _aargh_ ”

Nicolò’s face has set into genuine alarm. Goffredo is watching from a distance, and making the mark of the cross.

“Keep—aargh— _GOOOOOIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!_ ” Yusuf screeches, now wiggling his thorax and his extremities as best he can against the bonds, some of the grunts simulated, some of them truly from the pain of the ropes burning against his skin and bending his bones and the thumps of his arse and his knees and his elbows and heel against the oak of the chair.

Nicolò gets the message. He resumes praying. _Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum—_

Yusuf is having trouble holding back the urge to laugh again. Barely a moment ago, he had been dragged in here believing Nicolò was dead. And now, here they are, and Yusuf is playing pretend, like a child, performing what he hopes is a convincing impression of a demon being exorcised from a human.

(He can see Nicolò’s lips quirking up in a smirk, too, in between the statements of the Lord’s Prayer. This is absurd. And they both know it.)

Yusuf wriggles again, under Nicolò’s touch, and finds he is almost enjoying this. Almost.

And then the knot binding his right leg finally comes loose, and his knee careens out and his foot follows, and swings.

Yusuf feels fabric and muscle and bone underneath his sole, and hears a thump and a grunt.

 _“Fuck!”_ he gasps. “Fuck! I’m sorry, Nicolò. Sorry.” He peers forward, as far forward as he can move his head, and Nicolò is on his back, winded, engulfed in his own cassock, smarting. "Nicolò! I’m sorry. Are you hurt? I am so sorry. It was an accident. I did not mean—”

He is so engrossed with apologising to Nicolò, with wanting to laugh at his own stupidity and clumsiness, with worrying that he has inflicted pain on him—Yusuf is so engrossed with all of this, that he only realises that the bishop has crossed the room again when he feels the tip of quarterstaff in his ribcage again, and sees the glimmer of a sword blade at either side.

“Get your _feet_ off my priest, heathen!” Goffredo spits. He stands back, turns to Nicolò, and, his furious expression suddenly dissolving into an almost avuncular concern: “Iago! Are you hurt?”

“Yes, ye— _yeess_ , fine,” Nicolò replies, only remembering halfway through the words which accent and voice he is supposed to be using. “The demon is gone. God willing, this man is now free.”

Goffredo looks back at Yusuf, who is now holding his breath—concerned he has got himself into deep shit.

It is now dawning on him that, not only did he call Nicolò by his true name, he spoke to him in sabir, not in Arabic.

“If he is free,” Goffredo says, his face creeping into a smile, a smile that seems all too sweet for the wickedness he and his church and his master’s court have brought to this place. “ _If_ he is free…” and here he raises the quarterstaff again, and Yusuf feels the familiar piercing pain of a wooden pole being shoved into his chest, “then he will tell us _where_ he left the lamp?”

“Wait. _Wait!_ ” Yusuf panics, flailing with his one free leg, “I do not—please, my lord of Genoa, surely we can come to some arrangement—”

There is a sudden spurt of laughter from the two guards, and Yusuf can smell bad breath filtered through steel and wants to retch as he realises—

“Genoa? _Genoa?_ ” Goffredo pushes further, with an incredulous snarl, tilting the chair backwards, just a little, enough for Yusuf to lose his sense of space and feel dizzy in his emaciated state— “I come here, all these hundreds and hundreds of miles from the fair and noble city of Venice, and you dare to call me as if I am one of those pig-fuckers from _Genoa_? Good lord, imbecile, have you never seen a map?”

Yusuf is livid with himself (what a _stupid_ error to make, a tiny one in the grand scheme of things—although it is pretty rich coming from the Venetians, who have variously called him Egyptian, Arab, Amharic, Persian, a Jew, a Turk, Indian, and the son of a whore) even as he frantically adjusts his accent further and pleads in Sabir, “my Lord! I apologise. I am but a simple man! I know not of each of your fine cities, I pray to the Almighty that you will forgive me this trespass against you and the glorious and radiant city of—”

“You shall _earn_ your forgiveness from my city and my people,” Goffredo now barks, allowing the chair to tip back forward so that Yusuf’s ears ring with the sound of oak legs striking the stone flags on the floor, and his eyes shake in their sockets at the impact, and _everything_ hurts, even though he knows it will still be healing—or _will it_?—and Yusuf’s mind spins and he cannot think, cannot talk, cannot process anything as Goffredo screams, repeatedly, “Where is the lamp? The LAMP! The light? Where is it? _Where is the lamp?_ ”

And all Yusuf can do, all he can manage, is to tell the truth:

“There is _no_ lamp,” he mumbles.

 _“Speak up!”_ Goffredo demands. “Say it again.”

“There is _no lamp!_ ” Yusuf shouts. “I know _nothing_ of this lamp you seek. There is no lamp I know of.” (Yusuf has not lit the lamp in his own bedroom for months, not since the oil ran out, and he thinks the wick might have fallen out.)

Goffredo looks him up and down.

“My lord,” suggests Nicolò—and Yusuf can see he is tensed to breaking point and his voice is wavering— “my lord, we are wasting our time here. Let us leave him be.”

The bishop casts a withering look at ‘Padre Iago.’

“I agree our time has been wasted,” he grumbles, and then turns back to Yusuf and his anger _erupts_ as he grabs Yusuf by the neck and the shoulders and anything he can get purchase on and starts pushing the chair backwards with his bare hands in lurches as he spits: “ _you_ lied, you said you knew Nicholas! You said you had used his lamp to cheat death. You _lied_ to me. You are a thief and a plunderer and a child of Satan! You have done the Devil’s work sending us on this wild goose chase, boy, and you shall pay for this, and I shall _not_ be merciful!”

Yusuf can hear the _thump, thump_ of approaching boots, and the terrible squeal of the chair’s legs against the flags, and he is not sure if they will torture him, or if this _is_ the point at which they push him out of the window—

Nicolò is still there, eyes wide with alarm. The boots—they could be Andromache, or Quỳnh, or they could be a witless Frankish knight come to hack off Yusuf’s arms or his legs or his cock or his head for their entertainment—

And a terrible thought has struck Yusuf—what if, on going out of the window, this chair sinks and does not break? If he cannot wiggle free? What if he lands on the sea bed, drowns, revives, and drowns again? If he is washed out to sea, far away from the prospect of rescue?

Is this Yusuf’s future? Death, and death, and death?

“You have _confounded_ us for the last time, trickster,” Padre Goffredo di Venezia finally says, and Yusuf realises from the breeze and the light and the sound of crashing waves below that the chair must be perilously close to the edge. “Goodbye, Ala ad-Din.”

Yusuf looks at Nicolò. Wondering if, after all this time, this is the last time he will ever see those eyes, those lips, that nose. Making this a promise, bound up in a glance. _I will find you again, Nicolò. No matter how long it takes,_ although now he wonders, what if Andromache was right and at some point in future he _does_ die—

“Forgive me,” Nicolò says.

Goffredo laughs at that, an ugly, laddish chortle. “Don’t seek forgiveness from this devil-worshipper, Iago,” he smirks. “He has no concept of forgiveness.”

“I wasn’t talking to him.”

And with that, a pair of hands close around Goffredo’s throat, and Nicolò is there, straining, and quickly moves his hands and there is a terrible _crack_ and a thud of limbs on the floor, and then more thumping, and shouting, and grunting.

Yusuf sees blood, and sword blades with a red gleam, hears weapons whipping through the air, and closes his eyes until the footsteps and the grunts and the hissing song of metal slicing through tendons and tearing through fabric and sparks flying—

Until it stops.

There is a silence, save for the breath of the three survivors, and the breath of Yusuf, and the sea’s breath lapping against the walls of the tower.

And then there is a rush of footsteps, as a voice—Andromache’s—calls out in a tongue Yusuf does not know, and…

“Yusuf?”

And Yusuf opens his eyes to find Nicolò crouching in front of him, face beflecked with spatters and lines and glistening red blood—

And then there is a gentle pull at his ribs, and the bonds are cut, and Yusuf is being lifted, and—

He is too tired to move his legs, too tired to say anything, and only has the energy to collapse into Nicolò’s arms.

It feels like home. Even with the torn cassock soaked in blood and the bite of the sea breeze and Yusuf’s scratchy tunic and the sticky tears on his cheeks and the scratch of his beard—

“It’s all right,” Nicolò whispers, in word-perfect Arabic, his voice a smooth, tender baritone. “I’m here. It’s all right. I’m here, Yusuf.”

Yusuf tilts his head back, and is well aware he is crying, with no dignity, and no shame, and, between panicked breaths, croaks out: “hello, Nicolò.”

Nicolò’s smile comes out on a sigh of relief, and it’s like a sunrise.

“Hello, old friend,” he beams, and pulls Yusuf into a tight embrace, touching their foreheads together.

Yusuf does not resist, and clings to him.

He has no energy to say the things he wants to say. _God must have wanted this. I have missed you. I love you and I wish we had never parted._

Instead, on a storm-surge of tears, he blurts out: “I thought you were dead.”

Nicolò draws back a little, and gives him a dry look in the eyes. “Dead? Why would I be dead?”

“She told me,” Yusuf sobs. “I thought— I thought—”

That raises one of Nicolò’s eyebrows (Yusuf had forgotten quite how intense they could be, and oh god, aren’t they beautiful) and he asks: “ _who_ told you?”

Before Yusuf can answer, Andromache is there, and pulling off her helmet, she speaks up:

“I couldn’t risk them interrogating you and finding out about Nicolò.” She cuts a glance at Nicolò here, whose face has chilled in an instant. “I’m sorry.”

“You did not have to lie to him, Andromache,” Nicolò glares, outwardly cool, but Yusuf can detect he is a sharp edge cutting through the air, seething underneath.

Yusuf, meanwhile, is wondering how deep the deception ran.

“How much did you lie to me about?” he asks, his voice running out on a hiccup. “How much—”

“You told him _what,_ Andromache?” That’s the other remaining guard, removing her helmet to reveal sharp eyes, a pointy chin, and black hair that pours down to her shoulder. This must be Quỳnh, and she’s regarding Yusuf with wary glances—well aware that she has not been introduced to him yet, and there is unfinished business—

“Is it true that we can die?” he asks, when he’s got his breath back.

Nicolò starts, and takes a moment to process his words. Quỳnh’s mouth drops open a little, and then she’s looking at Andromache, her stare hardening.

“We cannot die,” Nicolò whispers, throatily, as if that’ll make it true.

“You said we can die, one day,” Yusuf says, to Andromache, still gulping down breaths as if he was drowning, the sweat on his skin catching the cold breeze from the sea. “One day it just stops and then we can die. Tell me. Is it true?”

“We’ll explain later,” says Andromache, after a long pause—

“Oh, Andromache,” says Quỳnh, her voice melting into disappointment as she rattles off a long and exhausted stream of invective in what Yusuf assumes must be her mother tongue, “what have you done, my love? Did you not tell—”

“We don’t have time!” Andromache insists, her jaw tightening as she turns to the door, and Yusuf can hear, under the hiss of the waves and his own breathing and his own thrumming heartbeat— “They’re coming!”

There are footsteps, the thumping of leather boots and sabatons on stone.

Yusuf is not ready to fight, and feels as if he is about to throw up.

Nicolò is looking at him, his own breath unsteady, eyes at once terrifying and terrified, glance flitting between the doorway and Yusuf.

“Get him on his feet, Nicolò,” says Quỳnh, and then, to Andromache: “cover them.”

Yusuf feels his tendons and bones and the bare slips of muscles he has left being pulled and torn as he tries to take Nicolò’s hand and bring himself upright, and he merely topples to the floor again, his knees catching on the inside of his tunic. He tries rising again. He fails.

“I can’t,” Yusuf begins to say, but can barely manage anything before Nicolò has his hands under his thighs, and Yusuf feels himself being turned, and lifted onto Nicolò’s shoulder.

Yusuf does not see what happens next.

He hears the door burst open, and blades swinging, and metal edges sliding along metal edges. He hears Nicolò’s breath quicken. He hears the grunting of two voices, might be Andromache, might be Quỳnh, might be both of them.

And then he hears some words in sabir, or maybe Genoese, spoken by a woman.

“Too many.”

Yusuf squints, and sees the sea, and the sun touching the horizon.

“Go,” says the woman’s voice again. “Nicolò! _Go!_ ”

“We’re going out of the window, aren’t we?” Yusuf mumbles.

Nicolò shakes his head. “I’m not taking that risk,” he whispers, in Arabic, then repeats in sabir: “I’m not risking it—”

Yusuf closes his fist around Nicolò’s cassock before he can protest further.

“It’s all right,” he whispers, although he doesn’t know how he can possibly be sure of that. “It’s all right.”

“I am _not_ letting you go again!”

Yusuf coughs, and feels as if he has been punched in the gut at the same time.

He looks up, and sees Nicolò looking down, lip trembling just a little.

 _“Hurry! The window!”_ comes a call from across the room. _“We’ll be right behind you!”_

Yusuf opens his fingers again, and finds purchase on Nicolò’s arm, probably, or maybe somewhere on his torso.

“I’m promise I won’t let you go again, either,” he breathes.

Nicolò tightens his own grip around Yusuf’s thigh and foot, and turns, and takes a few steps forwards, and outwards.

Yusuf hears the wind, smells the sea, feels the horrible drop of his unrestrained descent, and clings tighter to Nicolò, and tries not to scream.

The progression of the world, the progression of his fall— _everything_ seems to slow down for him.

And he hears the roar of the wind building, and feels Nicolò’s billowing cassock in his face and his hair, and the commotion from the guards, and—

(Of course, while this instant is almost pleasant, Yusuf has fallen from enough great heights before to know that if you have time to think about the fact you are falling, it is, by definition, too far, and landing is going to be excruciating.)

As he thinks this, he is immediately knocked out on impact with the water, and his skeleton is further dashed to pieces on an ancient column beneath.

* * *

He thinks he might see a pair of eyebrows wide with alarm. He kids himself into thinking he feels a callused hand on his cheek.

He definitely tastes salt water, and definitely retches this time.

His spine cracks and corrals what’s left of his ribcage around it.

He sees eyes, and a reflection of the sea.

And then he feels sand under his back, and is aware of the world turning around him again.

He does not remember where he is. He barely remembers his own name.

There are flashes of coherence. Being dragged against the current. Being lifted and carried up a sandy beach. An almighty cough rising from his chest. A loud whistling sound. Salt water and blood dribbling down his front. The clamouring of the feet of a horse.

And a voice.

“I’m here, Yusuf.”

There are more flashes.

The snort of an animal greeting its rider. The weight of his own bony buttocks on a leather saddle. A brown coat of fur. The rolling swash beneath him.

“Hold tight.”

Yusuf blinks the salt from his eyes, and takes stock of his surroundings.

He is vertical. He is no longer submerged in water. He is on the back of a horse, and feels it shift under him to accept its other rider.

There is wind in his hair, but it is gentle, the warm touch of the Med rather than the roar of a flailing descent.

“Are you comfortable?” Nicolò asks, as he hauls himself into the saddle ( _just_ long enough for the both of them) and pushes backwards.

“Where—” Yusuf can barely form a word, and most of it comes out as a long, shuddering cough— “how—”

“Sur is behind us,” Nicolò says. “We swam to the shore, we’re now going south. We found a suitable cave not many leagues hence, we’ll camp there for the night.”

Yusuf’s mind churns (They’re outside Sur? Nicolò learned to swim? He has a particular cave in mind?) and turns his head backwards, to face north, and almost falls from the horse—instinctively reaching out, and grasping onto Nicolò’s soggy tunic, which makes a cold squelch as he scrunches the fabric in his fist.

He sees the towers of Sur behind him, lit in the gold of the setting sun.

“We can’t leave them there,” he gurgles. “We can’t—”

“We’re not,” says Nicolò, bringing him back upright onto the saddle.

“Not just Andromache— everyone there—” and Yusuf can see so many people in his mind’s eye: Mustafa the potter, Munirah the baker, Zulfi at the hammam, the children at the maktab—

“We’re _not_ ,” Nicolò repeats. “We need to leave. Now. We’re going to lose the light and there will be a party looking for us.”

Yusuf takes a deep breath, and gulps it down, and brings his arms around Nicolò’s waist.

For now, putting his friends at home—for no matter for how short a period Sur has been home for him, it _is_ home, nonetheless—behind him, as much as it crushes him to do so.

“Nicolò,” Yusuf rasps, as his enemy of old tugs at the reins and their steed turns south, “Nicolò, I… I do not deserve a friend as good as you.”

“Yusuf, my love, I am nowhere near half as good a friend as you deserve,” Nicolò replies, impatient, “now hold tight, let’s go.”

Yusuf holds on, as the horse sets off with a trot that becomes a canter and a gallop, and he allows the vibration to shake him to his bones, to pummel his pelvis against the saddle, to jerk his old skull on his creaky spine.

He is too tired, and barely remembers leaning into Nicolò’s back before he dozes off.

* * *

Yusuf awakens, as he has so many times in his long life, to the golden flicker of a lamp, and the sound and smell of the sea.

He is on his side, unclothed, and swaddled in fabric. There is stone and sand below him, and the taste of salt.

There is also the sound of an animated argument, three speakers’ phonemes blending into each other as their reflections and echoes bounce off the walls of the cave recess in competition. Yusuf has to work his mind hard to process what is being said, in a motley collection of languages.

“This was reckless.”

“We got him back. If you’d listened instead of snapping that bastard’s neck—”

“He could’ve been swept out!”

“So could you—”

“And as for the rumours. What if one of the refugees recognises him? If they believe the magic lamp thing?”

“It worked, though. We found him—”

“Andromache, we made a _mess_ while we did it—”

Yusuf potters around a corner, peering past a cave wall, to see three figures stood around a fire. Quỳnh and Andromache, at loggerheads, and Nicolò, holding in a cool fury.

“Think of the effect it will have on him,” he injects into a silence that isn’t there. “I spoke to some of them. They know him, they _like him_. All the work he’s done to help secure the food supply, to keep the defences manned? They’ve taken to calling him ‘al-Tayyib.’ Imagine if someone had been calling you ‘Andromache the Generous’ and then got told you were a witch.”

“I don’t need to imagine,” Andromache retorts. “People will always be suspicious of you, kid. Get used to it—”

“He does not deserve to have his name sullied, he deserves _better_ —”

Yusuf clears his throat, slightly, and gathers the swaddle of blankets around his waist.

Silence falls. Andromache turns her sharp nose and weary eyes towards Yusuf, and almost looks remorseful. Quỳnh, whom Yusuf has not yet actually met, opens her mouth as if to say something.

Nicolò does not waste a second. He is dropping the knife he is sharpening, and he is running, and catching Yusuf in his arms, and Nicolò holds him so tight that it hurts and Yusuf doesn’t care one bit.

* * *

“Your hair looks good like this,” Nicolò whispers to him, later.

Yusuf is sat on an upturned bucket. Nicolò stands behind him, long fingers working oil into Yusuf’s hair, gently tightening each curl and coil and twist.

“I was meaning to cut it,” Yusuf replies. He does not mention, _so it is like it was back at al-Quds, a quarter of a century ago. When we first killed each other._ “It was hard to get hold of sharp blades. And I didn’t trust anyone else.”

Nicolò snorts, and a small smile creeps onto his mouth. The same smirk from earlier, from the silly performance of an exorcism. Yusuf finds his heart beating faster.

This is not a hammam or even a tub containing heated sea water (that shall have to wait until their group of refugees from Sur arrives at the next safe city, or any caravanserai that is foolish enough to take them) but this, after the short swim he just took in the sea (with Nicolò keeping watch from the coastline) is the cleanest Yusuf has felt for a long while. And yet, he looks down at himself, and hates the sight. Although Nicolò and Andromache and Quỳnh fed him very well, skewered fish and bread and water cannot at once undo months upon months of starvation, of sallow skin and weak bones and unruly body hair and boils and pimples and hunger pangs.

When Nicolò is done with re-defining the curls in his hair and softening his beard, he moves his hands to Yusuf’s bare shoulders, to the nape of his neck, thumbs rubbing gently back and forth. Yusuf does not register surprise, or draw in a gasp of arousal. Instead, he lets gravity take its course, and allows his head to fall backwards, his still-damp hair and scalp resting against Nicolò’s belly.

He spends a long time staring at Nicolò’s jawline, the mole on his cheek, the bridge of his nose. Yusuf thinks he might be even more beautiful without the beard and with his hair worn short. A smile leaks from Yusuf’s mouth, and Nicolò grins in return.

Yusuf opens his mouth to speak, to tell Nicolò something—but he doesn’t know what, and no words will form on his lips. He feels his stomach rumble with heated discomfort (the fish and the bread from earlier was more than he’s had in over a month) and tenses as he tries to stop himself from farting or burping or otherwise making an embarrassment of himself, because he knows there are people elsewhere in this cave and the sound will carry—

“I have missed you,” Nicolò says, bringing his long fingers around Yusuf’s chin.

Yusuf squeezes his eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” he says. For everything. _Leaving. Not coming back to you. Not telling you how I felt about you. Not even trying to send a letter to you._ “I’m sorry,” he repeats, a whisper-throated apology.

The corners of Nicolò’s lips quirk upwards, and he cradles Yusuf’s cheeks in his hands.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Yusuf,” he soothes.

Their gazes linger for a moment. They breathe each other’s air.

Nicolò wipes away a fallen tear with his thumb.

Yusuf had not even realised he was crying. _Again._ He hates himself for it, for he seems to do little else these days—even today, when he feels he has no right to do so. He’s got a private corner of this temporary grotto. He’s been fed and washed. He’s seen the twenty-three evacuees of Sur who are sharing this cave for tonight, and almost cried with relief on seeing that Mustafa, Munirah, and Zulfiqar are among them.

After a quarter of a century, Yusuf’s face is in the hands of a man he is certain he loves.

And yet—it’s not enough. It is never enough.

“I am _so tired_ ,” Yusuf chokes out. “I am so tired with everything.”

“You can rest now.”

Nicolò’s voice is a balm, like the hair oil, like the warmth of those calloused thumbs wiping tears away. Like the sight of his eyes, dancing in the flicker of the still-burning lamp, and the small fire they have lit in this corner for heat.

“Yeah,” Yusuf mumbles. _Rest._ “Yeah.”

Nicolò clasps his hand to help him upright, and Yusuf feels that calloused thumb rubbing back and forth on his palm.

Their eyes meet again.

“I’ve missed you too, Nicolò,” he says, through a wet smile. “I’m glad you’re back.”

* * *

“His name was Lykon,” Quỳnh had said, as Yusuf let the fish’s crispy skin flake away under his teeth. “He was like us, and then one day, a long time ago, he died.”

Yusuf kept chewing, but heard Nicolò draw in an uncomfortable breath beside him.

Andromache was still not making eye contact.

“We don’t know how, or why,” Quỳnh continued. “He got hit, and he didn’t stop bleeding. And he died.”

Her face was ashen, as if this was reopening some ancient wound that she had forgotten. (Because it was.) Yusuf turned to look at Nicolò, who was staring back at him.

“He was younger than both of us,” Andromache cut in, keeping her eyes trained on the cave floor.

 _So it could be tomorrow,_ Yusuf thinks, _or it could be ten thousand years. For any of us._

And then, Quỳnh caught her eyes, and she looked at Nicolò.

“I apologise,” she said. “I should’ve told you sooner. And,” and here she turned to Yusuf, “I shouldn’t have lied to you.”

“I understand,” Yusuf says, “you are forgiven.”

He does not unlock his eyes from Nicolò’s, as his mind races around him.

* * *

When they finally kiss, it is the easiest thing in the world. Nicolò on his lips is the natural order of things: it is the sun rising in the morning; it is the tide turning; it is the crackling of a warm fire beside a warm bed. It is home.

Before Yusuf can say anything, Nicolò rubs Yusuf’s cheeks with his thumbs, and says: “you have such beautiful eyes.”

And then he moves in for another kiss, deeper, and Yusuf feels as if he could overflow with love for him, with twenty-five years of longing, of dammed memories breaking loose all at once—

They keep to a low whisper, lest Andromache or Quỳnh overhear them, or, god forbid, any of those who have taken the offer to leave Sur wonder who’s making the racket and put two and two together.

But once Nicolò’s clothes are off, once he has bracketed Yusuf underneath him between his elbows—as Nicolò asks, “are you sure?” and Yusuf consents with a kiss, and a nod, and another kiss, and by grasping at the curve of Nicolò’s neck into his shoulders— he never wants to lose this man again, he wants to be next to him, close to him, he wants Nicolò inside him and he wants to be inside Nicolò, he wants to never go another night wishing things had gone differently because this, now— as Nicolò gently prepares him, teases him open, kisses him and then pushes inside, slowly, pulling back and waiting when Yusuf makes a growl that might be pain or ecstasy (and honestly Yusuf can’t tell any more)—

This is a simple, imperfect, unfettered bliss.

This is love.

“I love you,” Yusuf says, and doesn’t know or care if it’s a ragged whisper or an elated scream that Zulfi will overhear from the other side of the cave.

Nicolò laughs, a big, hooting laugh that shows his teeth, and Yusuf feels blessed.

“I love you, too,” he replies, and kisses the inside of Yusuf’s calf, and his knuckles, and his collarbone, and his nipple, and then his mouth.

When Yusuf finishes, and Nicolò follows shortly afterwards, Nicolò douses a particularly scratchy and torn piece of black fabric in bathing water, wipes them both down, and then tosses it onto the fire.

“My old cassock,” he explains.

Yusuf snorts so hard it hurts, and holds Nicolò tighter.

“Goodbye, Padre Iago,” he mumbles.

It takes them a few tries to settle into their bedroll. They settle on Yusuf curling around Nicolò’s back, Nicolò holding his hand. It is warm and it fills Yusuf’s heart.

“I can feel your penis on my arse,” Nicolò mumbles, sleepily. Yusuf makes an embarrassed yelp, mumbles ‘sorry,’ and starts to back away before Nicolò tightens his grip on Yusuf’s hand, turns his face around, and says, with a wicked smirk: “I wasn’t complaining.”

Yusuf chuckles, and settles back in— flexing his hands, listening for Nicolò’s breath, feeling for the thrum of his heartbeat.

“I cannot quite believe you are here,” he says. “It feels as if I am dreaming.”

“I’m here,” Nicolò replies, smiling and squeezing his hand tighter. “I shall always be here for you, Yusuf.”

* * *

On the second night the refugees from Sur make camp, as Andromache and Quỳnh argue about the caravan’s ultimate destination, Yusuf entertains the twelve children with a story about a fisherman and a djinnī.

Mustafa, Munirah, and Nicolò are roasting fish on the fire to be served as food. Zulfiqar is, in principle, supposed to be doing the same—however, he is (a) exhausted, because he was the one who _caught_ the fish; (b) staring in a distracted stupor at Nicolò.

(Yusuf does not suppose he can blame Zulfi for this.)

The children shush each other as Yusuf begins, and recites a variation on the story from his heart—a well-worn tale he has told many times before and will tell many times again.

“Once, long ago,” he says, “there was a fisherman who befriended an exile from across the sea. Many years later the fisherman dredged up an old oil lamp containing a djinnī. The djinnī offered the fisherman three wishes in exchange for his freedom.

“The fisherman said: ‘I wish to see my old friend from across the sea before I die; and I wish for a plague to strike down the enemy army.’

“His wish was granted, but not as the fisherman had desired. His friend returned to the city, as a soldier in the enemy army. He died from the plague, and cursed the fisherman’s name as he did so.

“The fisherman had one wish left. After long, sleepless nights, and careful deliberation, the fisherman rubbed the magic lamp one last time, and said—”

The words catch on Yusuf’s throat here, because the tale as he knows it does not quite seem right. It is just a story, of course—but something does not quite ring true.

And then, from across the fire, another voice rises, and picks up the story where Yusuf left off:

“—the fisherman cried,” Nicolò says, “‘djinnī: I wish my friend from across the sea had never left. I wish he had known how he changed my life. How much I valued our friendship. How much I loved him.’”

Yusuf blinks away prickling tears, as Nicolò’s face makes that tiny smile again.

He continues: “The djinnī said to the fisherman: ‘tell him yourself,’ and disappeared in a puff of smoke. In his place stood the fisherman’s friend, alive, and well, having heard what the fisherman had just said.”

One of Munirah’s great-nieces, a precocious girl called Zeinab, supplies the ending: “and they both lived happily, forever?”

Yusuf catches Nicolò’s eyes again, across the fire, and nods.

_Forever, however long that is._

“And they both lived happily,” Yusuf agrees, smiling, “forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Warnings:**
> 
>   * **Starvation:** This is set at the end of the Siege of Tyre in 1124, after which a contemporary source states there were only five measures of wheat left in the city. Yusuf is basically on the verge of starvation—emaciated, exhausted, in constant pain.
>   * **Eye/Head Trauma:** Yusuf is skewered through the face and probably through the eye socket when dismantling a market stall.
>   * **Family Berevament:** Yusuf's mother dies of old age.
>   * **Torture/interrogation:** Yusuf is interrogated by a priest who thinks he stole a valuable relic of Saint Nicholas.
>   * **Racism:** The Venetian invaders express racist views. Two of them vandalise the inside of an elderly man's shop. They have a poor grasp of Levantine, Arab, and North African geography. They use the word 'saracen' in a period-typical context.
>   * **Sex:** They have sex. Twice.
> 

> 
> I've made every effort with historical accuracy and have tried to treat the subject matter with sensitivity. But, as always, if I've got anything offensively wrong, or have allowed harmful tropes to seep in, please message me (viridianpanther on Tumblr) and I will fix it right away.


End file.
